InformationTechnology - from the first steps until modern breakthroughs

Introduction

Nowadays humanity can hardly imagine their lives without active usage of information technology as well as all the leverages and advantages that it brings. Information technology can be found almost in each and every aspect of our today's life, starting from means of communication and ending up with healthcare technologies. Hence, contemporary development and improvement as well provision of the best means of information technology usage represents an essential aspect, which should be taken into consideration.

History Overview

Various devices have been used throughout the history to assist in computation for many years. The first means of computation are dating back to thousands years ago. Since then the means of computation and information transition have undergone major alterations. For example, Europe has received the first mechanical calculator around year 1645. That machine wasable to perform four standard arithmetical operations.

The introduction of electronic devices dates back to early 1940s. One of the first electromechanical devices wasZuse Z3, which wasinvented in 1941. It was the introduction of world's first programmable computer.Since then electromechanical devices were altering, changing and improving. By the time of the Second World War German messages have already been decryptedby the first digital electronic computers. That computer was able to perform a single task only. Since then information technology was developing to be able to improve the memory of electronic devices, as memory storage issues were appearing with high frequency. However by 21^st June, 1948the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) had been introduced. It was the first modern digital electronic stored-program computer.

However in 1956 IBM has put a start to a whole new branch of information technology development by introducing the first hard disk drive. It wasone of components of their computer system named 305 RAMAC. Since then most digital data was stored either magnetically (on hard disks) or optically (on CD-ROM discs). Later on USB devices have been invented and until today the data storage means and devices keep on improving and changing from year to year.

Information Technology Advancement

However data storage is not the one and only major issue concerning information technology. As the progress was advancing, it was becoming obvious that innovations in sphere of information technology are inevitable aspect along the way of progress. Likewise programming has already become an inseparable part of information technology industry and diversified programming languages have been created.

So for purposes of stored data retrieval Structured Query Language (SQL) was invented. It was based on relational algebra. Besides that data transmission issue has also started to attract the attention of many people. Physical transportation was taking too long time and never was 100% reliable. Hereby with help of innovations data transmission had become possible in the industry of information technology. Data transmission had to include three major aspects: transmission, propagation, and reception. So with appearance of XML in early 2000s the means of data interchange has become way easier. So machine-oriented interactions, including web-oriented protocols (such as SOAP) have become less time-consuming and more reliable.

By that time most of people around the world already knew what Internet is all about. There were created a lot of various programs, staring from creation of documents (Microsoft Word, Excel etc), means of communication (chats, blogs, internet calls etc) and ending up with entertainment (games, online media, music, videos etc).

Current Challenges

So one of the major challenges of contemporary information technology industry - is to keep pace of development and also be able to naturally integrate in human lives without bringing any harm to it.