The Past and Present of a Technology (The Beginning Part)

Technology has proven to evolve with time and continuous studies and research by man. From the days of using Donkey and Carmel for transportation, using horns and town criers for passing information, technology has kept changing and making life easier. Looking back at how far we have come and our current position in technology will help know what future technology could look like.

Data Storage

In the 1720s, Data storage originated from the textile industry were punch cards were used to record series of instruction for controlling merchandized textile loom. After which in the 1940s, the use of Selectron tubes to store data which stored about 256 bits of data. In the 1960s, punch card methods were going out of vogue and IBM debuts the word first hard disk drive.

The drive was able to save 3.75kB. In the 1970s, the hard drive disk was superseded by the floppy disk which was first in 8inch then 5.25inch, then 3.5inch storing 1.44MB. In 1999 the compatible SD card from Sandisk and Toshiba. In the 2000s, the USB drive was introduced capable of storing 8MB of storage. Now, USB can store 100s of gigabytes even with smaller Micro USB. In the recent years, we rely on the cloud which was introduced in 2007 with the storage capacity of 1 Exabyte of data. In the nearest future, there might be need to expand this as more people are utilizing and producing data every seconds.

Computer

In the 1880s, Punch cards were used to for keeping data including censors results until Charles Babbage analytical engine prototype. In 1941, the first general purpose computer was developed by Konrad Zuse a German scientist. The computer relied on punch tape for data storage and a processor speed of 5-10Hz. Then in 1964, the first mass marketed desktop computer PROGRAMMA 101 was introduced to the public.

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Apple 1 computer arrived in 1976 with 4Kb of storage and 1MHZ processing unit. Now there are development in computers which also includes supercomputers and quantum computers. Currently, IBM Summit is the world’s most powerful supercomputer with 250PB (250,000TB) and uses flowing point operations per seconds (FLOPS), with a peak of 200 PETAFLOPS(which means it can process 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operation per seconds)

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Mobile Phone

The mobile phone started with Motorola in April 1973 when Motorola researcher Martin Cooper made the first call to announce that Motorola made history in the mobile technology race. The phone only displayed in single line and weighed about 1KG and took 10 hours to charge. In 1983 September, Motorola made their first commercial phone, Motorola Dynatac 8000x to reach the masses but was quite expensive with a whooping cost of $4,000 and had a 20 minute battery life even when the battery was 4 times heavier than the phone. In 1992, Nokia 1011 hit the world so business people could have a less heavy phone

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This phone was able to hold 99 phone numbers after which in 2000, the Nokia 3310 with the SMS capability for people to send messages. In the early 2000, Samsung, LG, Blackberry and Sagem came out with impressive smart phones after which in 2007, Steve Jobs lunched the first iPhone which was about 3.5 inch screen and 8 hour talk time. Currently, Samsung and iPhone are regarded as the mobile phone market dominators.

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Conclusion

Technology has proven to grow exponentially and it is not currently we are at the peak of a technological revolution, so the next two decades will be roll outs of new innovations. Technology is what makes the world evolove.