Answer the questions

1. What is information management?

2. What does the word “management” mean?

3. When did the proliferation of information technology start?

4. What does the job of the information management include?

5. Why did it become necessary to have a deep understanding of theory and technology?

6. When did information management as a new profession appear?

7. What has become a powerful resource and a large expense for many organisations?

8. What does information management include?

9. What university developed the behavioural science theory of management?

10. What is the crucial factor in the information and decision process analysis?

Module III. A Brief History of Computers

Text 1.The First Steps

"Who invented the computer?" is not a question with a simple answer. The real answer is that many scientists contributed to the history of computers and that a computer is a complex piece of machinery made up of many parts, and each can be considered a separate invention.

However, a series of very interesting developments in computers was started in Cambridge, England, by Charles Babbage, a gifted mathematician. In 1812, he began to design an automatic mechanical calculating machine, which he called a difference engine. It was intended to be a steam powered and fully automatic device commanded by a fixed instruction program. Then Babbage designed a fully program-controlled automatic mechanical digital computer. He called his project an “Analytical Engine”. The Analytical Engine was supposed to use punched cards for data input. However, the machine of his dream was never finished.

The designing of railways and the developing of industry required differential calculus to determine such things as the centre of gravity or stress distribution. So it was a strong need for a machine that could rapidly perform many repetitive calculations.

A step towards automated computing was the development of punched cards, which were first successfully used with computers in 1890 by Herman Hollerith and James Powers. Young scientists invented a means of coding the data by punching holes into cards. The specialists could read the information that had been punched into the cards automatically, without human help. Later Hollerith established his own tabulating machine company. Through a series of changes, the company eventually became the IBM Corporation.

These advantages soon led to the development of improved punched card in computers created in 1953 by International Business Machines (IBM) and other corporations. These computers used special devices in which electrical power provided mechanical motion - like turning the wheels of an adding machine.

Answer the questions

1. Why is it difficult to name the real inventor of the computer?

2.Who designed the first automatic mechanical calculating machine?

3. How was the Analytical Engine supposed to operate?

4. Why was it necessary to create a machine that could rapidly perform repetitive calculations?

5. Where did the first punched cards appear?

6. What did Herman Hollerith and James Powers create?

7. How did the specialists read information from punched cards?

8. Who established the first tabulating machine company?

9. What type of computers were created by the IBM Corporation. in 1953?

10. What devices did the first IBM computers use?