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135-559: The Information Age is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution , to an economy centered on information technology . The onset of the Information Age has been linked to the development of the transistor in 1947 and the optical amplifier in 1957. These technological advances have had

270-424: A central government, a complex economy and social structure, and systems for keeping records. These cultures variously invented the wheel, mathematics, bronze-working, sailing boats, the potter's wheel , woven cloth, construction of monumental buildings, and writing. Polytheistic religions developed, centered on temples where priests and priestesses performed sacrificial rites. Writing facilitated

405-522: A connection, and nearly half of Americans and people in several other countries used the Internet on a regular basis. However throughout the 1990s, "getting online" entailed complicated configuration, and dial-up was the only connection type affordable by individual users; the present day mass Internet culture was not possible. In 1989, about 15% of all households in the United States owned

540-732: A core area in Central Asia and Iran. They oversaw the Timurid Renaissance of art and architecture. Since at least the 4th century, Christianity has played a prominent role in shaping the culture, values, and institutions of Western civilization, primarily through Catholicism and later also Protestantism . Europe during the Early Middle Ages was characterized by depopulation, deurbanization , and barbarian invasions, all of which had begun in late antiquity . The barbarian invaders formed their own new kingdoms in

675-512: A dedicated home video game console according to an Entertainment Software Association annual industry report . By 2012, over 2 billion people used the Internet, twice the number using it in 2007. Cloud computing had entered the mainstream by the early 2010s. In January 2013, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported owning a smartphone . By 2016, half of the world's population was connected and as of 2020, that number has risen to 67%. In

810-613: A dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. By the early 1980s, along with improvements in computing power , the proliferation of the smaller and less expensive personal computers allowed for immediate access to information and the ability to share and store it. Connectivity between computers within organizations enabled access to greater amounts of information. The world's technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 (optimally compressed ) exabytes (EB) in 1986 to 15.8 EB in 1993; over 54.5 EB in 2000; and to 295 (optimally compressed) EB in 2007. This

945-460: A human brain has been estimated to lie between 10^15 and 10^17. While this number is impressive, even in 2007 humanity's general-purpose computers were capable of performing well over 10^18 instructions per second. Estimates suggest that the storage capacity of an individual human brain is about 10^12 bytes. On a per capita basis, this is matched by current digital storage (5x10^21 bytes per 7.2x10^9 people). Genetic code may also be considered part of

1080-404: A network of networks. The Whole Earth movement of the 1960s advocated the use of new technology. In the 1970s, the home computer was introduced, time-sharing computers , the video game console , the first coin-op video games, and the golden age of arcade video games began with Space Invaders . As digital technology proliferated, and the switch from analog to digital record keeping became

1215-625: A new contender that quickly surpassed both of these empires. Muhammad , the founder of Islam, initiated the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century. He established a new unified polity in Arabia that expanded rapidly under the Rashidun Caliphate and the Umayyad Caliphate , culminating in the establishment of Muslim rule on three continents (Asia, Africa, and Europe) by 750 CE. The subsequent Abbasid Caliphate oversaw

1350-454: A personal computer. For households with children, nearly 30% owned a computer in 1989, and in 2000, 65% owned one. Cell phones became as ubiquitous as computers by the early 2000s, with movie theaters beginning to show ads telling people to silence their phones. They also became much more advanced than phones of the 1990s, most of which only took calls or at most allowed for the playing of simple games. Text messaging became widely used in

1485-634: A political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rents from lands and manors. Kingdoms became more centralized after the decentralizing effects of the breakup of the Carolingian Empire . In 1054, the Great Schism between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches led to the prominent cultural differences between Western and Eastern Europe. The Crusades were

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1620-401: A powerful tool for its time. When a set of parameters resulted in a viable economy the model would stabilise and the results could be read from scales. The output from the computer could also be sent to a rudimentary plotter . It is thought that twelve to fourteen machines were built: The Terry Pratchett novel Making Money contains a similar device as a major plot point. However, after

1755-473: A series of empires of unprecedented size develop. Well-trained professional armies, unifying ideologies, and advanced bureaucracies created the possibility for emperors to rule over large domains whose populations could attain numbers upwards of tens of millions of subjects. International trade also expanded, most notably the massive trade routes in the Mediterranean Sea, the maritime trade web in

1890-562: A series of religious wars waged by Christians to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Muslims and succeeded for long enough to establish some Crusader states in the Levant . Italian merchants imported slaves to work in households or in sugar processing. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism and the founding of universities, while the building of Gothic cathedrals and churches

2025-566: A series of transparent plastic tanks and pipes which were fastened to a wooden board. Each tank represented some aspect of the UK national economy and the flow of money around the economy was illustrated by coloured water. At the top of the board was a large tank called the treasury. Water (representing money) flowed from the treasury to other tanks representing the various ways in which a country could spend its money. For example, there were tanks for health and education. To increase spending on health care

2160-637: A significant impact on the way information is processed and transmitted. According to the United Nations Public Administration Network , the Information Age was formed by capitalizing on computer miniaturization advances, which led to modernized information systems and internet communications as the driving force of social evolution . There is ongoing debate concerning whether the Third Industrial Revolution has already ended and if

2295-467: A single MOS chip by the late 1960s. The application of MOS LSI chips to computing was the basis for the first microprocessors , as engineers began recognizing that a complete computer processor could be contained on a single MOS LSI chip. In 1968, Fairchild engineer Federico Faggin improved MOS technology with his development of the silicon-gate MOS chip, which he later used to develop the Intel 4004 ,

2430-401: A standard until the mid-2000s outside Japan. The World Wide Web became publicly accessible in 1991, which had been available only to government and universities. In 1993 Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina introduced Mosaic , the first web browser capable of displaying inline images and the basis for later browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Stanford Federal Credit Union

2565-527: A tap could be opened to drain water from the treasury to the tank which represented health spending. Water then ran further down the model to other tanks, representing other interactions in the economy. Water could be pumped back to the treasury from some of the tanks to represent taxation . Changes in tax rates were modeled by increasing or decreasing pumping speeds. Savings reduce the funds available to consumers and investment income increases those funds. The machine showed it by draining water (savings) from

2700-510: A variety of periodizations. Humans evolved in Africa from great apes through the lineage of hominins , which arose 7–5 million years ago. The ability to walk on two legs emerged after the split from chimpanzees in early hominins, such as Australopithecus , as an adaptation possibly associated with a shift from forest to savanna habitats. Hominins began to use rudimentary stone tools c.  3.3  million years ago, marking

2835-475: A writing system and used the concept of zero in their mathematics. West of the Maya area, in central Mexico, the city of Teotihuacan prospered due to its control of the obsidian trade. Its power peaked around 450 CE, when its 125,000–150,000 inhabitants made it one of the world's largest cities. Technology developed sporadically in the ancient world. There were periods of rapid technological progress, such as

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2970-582: Is an example of a Neolithic religious or civic site. Metalworking was first used in the creation of copper tools and ornaments around 6400 BCE. Gold and silver soon followed, primarily for use in ornaments. The first signs of bronze , an alloy of copper and tin , date to around 4500 BCE, but the alloy did not become widely used until the third millennium BCE. The Bronze Age saw the development of cities and civilizations . Early civilizations arose close to rivers, first in Mesopotamia (3300 BCE) with

3105-582: Is that the early waves of migration died out and all modern non-Africans are descended from a single group that left Africa 70,000–50,000 years ago. H. sapiens proceeded to colonize all the continents and larger islands, arriving in Australia 65,000 years ago, Europe 45,000 years ago, and the Americas 21,000 years ago. These migrations occurred during the most recent Ice Age , when various temperate regions of today were inhospitable. Nevertheless, by

3240-419: Is the informational equivalent to less than one 730- megabyte (MB) CD-ROM per person in 1986 (539 MB per person); roughly four CD-ROM per person in 1993; twelve CD-ROM per person in the year 2000; and almost sixty-one CD-ROM per person in 2007. It is estimated that the world's capacity to store information has reached 5 zettabytes in 2014, the informational equivalent of 4,500 stacks of printed books from

3375-721: The Athenian Empire (454–404 BCE), which was defeated by a Spartan-led coalition during the Peloponnesian War . Philip of Macedon unified the Greek city-states into the Hellenic League and his son Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) founded an empire extending from present-day Greece to India. The empire divided into several successor states shortly after his death, resulting in the founding of many cities and

3510-597: The Axial Age . The following post-classical period , from about 500 to 1500 CE, witnessed the rise of Islam and the continued spread and consolidation of Christianity while civilization expanded to new parts of the world and trade between societies increased. These developments were accompanied by the rise and decline of major empires, such as the Byzantine Empire , the Islamic Caliphates ,

3645-1076: The Ayyubids in the 12th century, and them later by the Mamluks in the 13th century. In the Maghreb and Western Sahara , the Almoravids dominated from the 11th century, until it was subsumed by the Almohad Caliphate in the 12th century. The Almohad's collapse gave rise to the Marinids in Morocco, the Zayyanids in Algeria, and the Hafsids in Tunisia. In Nubia the Kingdom of Kush

3780-581: The Deltar for water management in the Netherlands, network analyzers for electrical systems, and various machines for aiming military guns and bombs. The construction of problem-specific analog computers continued in the late 1940s and beyond, with FERMIAC for neutron transport, Project Cyclone for various military applications, and the Phillips Machine for economic modeling. Building on

3915-708: The Eastern Agricultural Complex . They built earthworks such as Watson Brake (4000 BCE) and Poverty Point (3600 BCE), both in Louisiana. From 800 to 200 BCE, the Axial Age saw the emergence of transformative philosophical and religious ideas that developed in many different places mostly independently of each other. Chinese Confucianism , Indian Buddhism and Jainism , and Jewish monotheism all arose during this period. Persian Zoroastrianism began earlier, perhaps around 1000 BCE, but

4050-608: The Fourth Industrial Revolution has already begun due to the recent breakthroughs in areas such as artificial intelligence and biotechnologies. This next transition has been theorized to harken the advent of the Imagination Age . The digital revolution converted technology from analog format to digital format. By doing this, it became possible to make copies that were identical to the original. In digital communications, for example, repeating hardware

4185-660: The Indus script . In China, writing was first used during the Shang dynasty (1766–1045 BCE). Transport was facilitated by waterways, including rivers and seas, which fostered the projection of military power and the exchange of goods, ideas, and inventions. The Bronze Age also saw new land technologies, such as horse-based cavalry and chariots , that allowed armies to move faster. Trade became increasingly important as urban societies exchanged manufactured goods for raw materials from distant lands, creating vast commercial networks and

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4320-565: The LEO being the first commercially available general-purpose computer. Digital communication became economical for widespread adoption after the invention of the personal computer in the 1970s. Claude Shannon , a Bell Labs mathematician, is credited for having laid out the foundations of digitalization in his pioneering 1948 article, A Mathematical Theory of Communication . In 1948, Bardeen and Brattain patented an insulated-gate transistor (IGFET) with an inversion layer. Their concept, forms

4455-755: The Last Ice Age and had populated most of the Earth by the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago. Soon afterward, the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia brought the first systematic husbandry of plants and animals, and saw many humans transition from a nomadic life to a sedentary existence as farmers in permanent settlements . The growing complexity of human societies necessitated systems of accounting and writing . These developments paved

4590-854: The Late Bronze Age collapse that affected many Mediterranean civilizations between 1300 and 1000 BCE. The foundations of many cultural aspects in India were laid in the Vedic period (1750–600 BCE), including the emergence of Hinduism . From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics known as the Mahajanapadas were established across the subcontinent. Speakers of the Bantu languages began expanding across Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa as early as 3000 BCE until 1000 CE. Their expansion and encounters with other groups resulted in

4725-561: The Mongol Empire , and various Chinese dynasties . This period's invention of gunpowder and of the printing press greatly affected subsequent history. During the early modern period , spanning from approximately 1500 to 1800 CE, European powers explored and colonized regions worldwide, intensifying cultural and economic exchange. This era saw substantial intellectual, cultural, and technological advances in Europe driven by

4860-606: The Netherlands became the first countries to completely transition from analog to digital television . In September 2007, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having broadband internet at home. According to estimates from the Nielsen Media Research , approximately 45.7 million U.S. households in 2006 (or approximately 40 percent of approximately 114.4 million) owned a dedicated home video game console , and by 2015, 51 percent of U.S. households owned

4995-720: The Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Qin Shi Huang was an adherent of the Legalist school of thought and he displaced the hereditary aristocracy by creating an efficient system of administration staffed by officials appointed according to merit. The harshness of the Qin dynasty led to rebellions and the dynasty's fall. It was followed by the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE), which combined the Legalist bureaucratic system with Confucian ideals. The Han dynasty

5130-679: The Renaissance , the Scientific Revolution , and the Enlightenment . By the 18th century, the accumulation of knowledge and technology had reached a critical mass that brought about the Industrial Revolution , substantial to the Great Divergence , and began the modern period starting around 1800 CE. The rapid growth in productive power further increased international trade and colonization , linking

5265-613: The Sui dynasty (581–618). The Chinese were confronted by Turkic nomads, who were becoming the most dominant ethnic group in the region. Originally the relationship was largely cooperative but in 630, the Tang dynasty began an offensive against the Turks by capturing areas of the Ordos Desert . In the 8th century, Islam began to penetrate the region and soon became the sole faith of most of

5400-472: The T-carrier for long-haul pulse-code modulation (PCM) digital voice transmission. The T1 format carried 24 pulse-code modulated, time-division multiplexed speech signals each encoded in 64 kbit/s streams, leaving 8 kbit/s of framing information which facilitated the synchronization and demultiplexing at the receiver. Over the subsequent decades the digitisation of voice became the norm for all but

5535-853: The Tigris and Euphrates , followed by the Egyptian civilization along the Nile River (3200 BCE), the Norte Chico civilization in coastal Peru (3100 BCE), the Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan and northwestern India (2500 BCE), and the Chinese civilization along the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers (2200 BCE). These societies developed a number of shared characteristics, including

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5670-716: The Yellow River Valley may have cultivated millet by 7000 BCE. Pigs were the most important domesticated animal in early China. People in Africa's Sahara cultivated sorghum and several other crops between 8000 and 5000 BCE, while other agricultural centers arose in the Ethiopian Highlands and the West African rainforests. In the Indus River Valley , crops were cultivated by 7000 BCE and cattle were domesticated by 6500 BCE. In

5805-490: The arithmometer and the enabling technology of the punch card . Charles Babbage proposed a mechanical general-purpose computer called the Analytical Engine , but it was never successfully built, and was largely forgotten by the 20th century and unknown to most of the inventors of modern computers. The Second Industrial Revolution in the last quarter of the 19th century developed useful electrical circuits and

5940-494: The compass , one of China's Four Great Inventions . In Africa, the Kingdom of Kush prospered through its interactions with both Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa. It ruled Egypt as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty from 712 to 650 BCE, then continued as an agricultural and trading state based in the city of Meroë until the fourth century CE. The Kingdom of Aksum , centered in present-day Ethiopia, established itself by

6075-401: The digital technology that would follow decades later to replace analog microform with digital imaging , storage , and transmission media , whereby vast increases in the rapidity of information growth would be made possible through automated , potentially- lossless digital technologies. Accordingly, Moore's law , formulated around 1965, would calculate that the number of transistors in

6210-508: The early Muslim conquests , the Islamic Golden Age , and the commencement and expansion of the Arab slave trade , followed by the Mongol invasions and the founding of the Ottoman Empire. South Asia had a series of middle kingdoms , followed by the establishment of Islamic empires in India. In West Africa, the Mali and Songhai Empires rose. On the southeast coast of Africa, Arabic ports were established where gold, spices , and other commodities were traded. This allowed Africa to join

6345-562: The earth to the sun . The amount of digital data stored appears to be growing approximately exponentially , reminiscent of Moore's law . As such, Kryder's law prescribes that the amount of storage space available appears to be growing approximately exponentially. The world's technological capacity to receive information through one-way broadcast networks was 432 exabytes of (optimally compressed ) information in 1986; 715 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1993; 1.2 (optimally compressed) zettabytes in 2000; and 1.9 zettabytes in 2007,

6480-413: The information revolution . Now that sequencing has been computerized, genome can be rendered and manipulated as data. This started with DNA sequencing , invented by Walter Gilbert and Allan Maxam in 1976-1977 and Frederick Sanger in 1977, grew steadily with the Human Genome Project , initially conceived by Gilbert and finally, the practical applications of sequencing, such as gene testing , after

6615-423: The journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution in 2016 reported that: Digital technology has vastly exceeded the cognitive capacity of any single human being and has done so a decade earlier than predicted. In terms of capacity, there are two measures of importance: the number of operations a system can perform and the amount of information that can be stored. The number of synaptic operations per second in

6750-414: The planar process developed by Jean Hoerni . In 1963, complementary MOS (CMOS) was developed by Chih-Tang Sah and Frank Wanlass at Fairchild Semiconductor . The self-aligned gate transistor, which further facilitated mass production, was invented in 1966 by Robert Bower at Hughes Aircraft and independently by Robert Kerwin, Donald Klein and John Sarace at Bell Labs. In 1962 AT&T deployed

6885-449: The sack of Constantinople in 1204. In the early 13th century, a new wave of invaders, the Mongols , swept through the region but were eventually eclipsed by the Turks and the founding of the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Turkey around 1299. Steppe nomads from Central Asia continued to threaten sedentary societies in the post-classical era, but they also faced incursions from the Arabs and Chinese. China expanded into Central Asia during

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7020-505: The stirrup (India, 2nd century BCE and Central Asia, 1st century CE), both of which diffused widely throughout the world. The Chinese learned to make silk and built massive engineering projects such as the Great Wall of China and the Grand Canal . The Romans were also accomplished builders, inventing concrete , perfecting the use of arches in construction, and creating aqueducts to transport water over long distances to urban centers. Most ancient societies practiced slavery , which

7155-456: The telegraph . In the 1880s, Herman Hollerith developed electromechanical tabulating and calculating devices using punch cards and unit record equipment , which became widespread in business and government. Meanwhile, various analog computer systems used electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic systems to model problems and calculate answers. These included an 1872 tide-predicting machine , differential analysers , perpetual calendar machines,

7290-499: The 10th and 9th millennia BCE. Pastoral societies based on nomadic animal herding also developed, mostly in dry areas unsuited for plant cultivation such as the Eurasian Steppe or the African Sahel . Conflict between nomadic herders and sedentary agriculturalists was frequent and became a recurring theme in world history. Neolithic societies usually worshiped ancestors, sacred places, or anthropomorphic deities . The vast complex of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, dated 9500–8000 BCE,

7425-522: The 1990s, the spread of the Internet caused a sudden leap in access to and ability to share information in businesses and homes globally. A computer that cost $ 3000 in 1997 would cost $ 2000 two years later and $ 1000 the following year, due to the rapid advancement of technology. The world's technological capacity to compute information with human-guided general-purpose computers grew from 3.0 × 10 MIPS in 1986, to 4.4 × 10 MIPS in 1993; to 2.9 × 10 MIPS in 2000; to 6.4 × 10 MIPS in 2007. An article featured in

7560-418: The 1st century CE as a major trading empire, dominating its neighbors in South Arabia and Kush and controlling the Red Sea trade. It minted its own currency and carved enormous monolithic stelae to mark its emperors' graves. Successful regional empires were also established in the Americas, arising from cultures established as early as 2500 BCE. In Mesoamerica, vast pre-Columbian societies were built,

7695-409: The 7th century CE. Buddhism became the main religion in much of South, Southeast, and East Asia. The Greek philosophical tradition diffused throughout the Mediterranean world and as far as India, starting in the 4th century BCE after the conquests of Alexander the Great of Macedon . Both Christianity and Islam developed from the beliefs of Judaism . The millennium from 500 BCE to 500 CE saw

7830-420: The 9th century, when it succumbed to pressure from new invaders—the Vikings , Magyars , and Arabs. During the Carolingian era, churches developed a form of musical notation called neume which became the basis for the modern notation system. Kievan Rus' expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as

7965-484: The Americas, squash was cultivated by at least 8500 BCE in South America, and domesticated arrowroot appeared in Central America by 7800 BCE. Potatoes were first cultivated in the Andes of South America, where the llama was also domesticated. It is likely that women played a central role in plant domestication throughout these developments. Various explanations of the causes of the Neolithic Revolution have been proposed. Some theories identify population growth as

8100-459: The Greco-Roman era in the Mediterranean region. Greek science , technology , and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period, typified by devices such as the Antikythera mechanism . There were also periods of technological decay, such as the Roman Empire's decline and fall and the ensuing early medieval period. Two of the most important innovations were paper (China, 1st and 2nd centuries CE) and

8235-465: The Indian Ocean , and the Silk Road . The kingdom of the Medes helped to destroy the Assyrian Empire in tandem with the nomadic Scythians and the Babylonians . Nineveh , the capital of Assyria, was sacked by the Medes in 612 BCE. The Median Empire gave way to successive Iranian states, including the Achaemenid (550–330 BCE), Parthian (247 BCE–224 CE), and Sasanian Empires (224–651 CE). Two major empires began in modern-day Greece . In

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8370-705: The Islamic Golden Age, an era of learning, science, and invention during which philosophy , art , and literature flourished. Scholars preserved and synthesized knowledge and skills of ancient Greece and Persia the manufacture of paper from China and the decimal positional numbering system from India. At the same time, they made significant original contributions in various fields, such as Al-Khwarizmi 's development of algebra and Avicenna 's comprehensive philosophical system. Islamic civilization expanded both by conquest and based on its merchant economy. Merchants brought goods and their Islamic faith to China , India , Southeast Asia , and Africa . Arab domination of

8505-428: The Mediterranean-European world, political unity was always eventually restored. After the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty and the demise of the Three Kingdoms, nomadic tribes from the north began to invade, causing many Chinese people to flee southward. The post-classical period, dated roughly from 500 to 1500 CE, was characterized by the rise and spread of major religions while civilization expanded to new parts of

8640-405: The Middle East ended in the mid-11th century with the arrival of the Seljuk Turks , migrating south from the Turkic homelands. The Seljuks were challenged by Europe during the Crusades , a series of religious wars aimed at rolling back Muslim territory and regaining control of the Holy Land . The Crusades were ultimately unsuccessful and served more to weaken the Byzantine Empire, especially with

8775-448: The Norte Chico culture emerged in Peru around 3100 BCE. The Norte Chico built public monumental architecture at the city of Caral , dated 2627–1977 BCE. The later Chavín polity is sometimes described as the first Andean state, centered on the religious site at Chavín de Huantar . Other important Andean cultures include the Moche , whose ceramics depict many aspects of daily life, and the Nazca , who created animal-shaped designs in

8910-458: The Romans. The Republic became an empire and by the time of Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE), it had established dominion over most of the Mediterranean Sea. The empire continued to grow and reached its peak under Trajan (53–117 CE), controlling much of the land from England to Mesopotamia. The two centuries that followed are known as the Pax Romana , a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity, and political stability in most of Europe. Christianity

9045-407: The Scientific Age and the Industrial Age all, ultimately, induced discontinuous and irreversible changes in the economic, social and cultural elements of the daily life of most people. Traditionally, these epochs have taken place over hundreds, or in the case of the Neolithic Revolution, thousands of years, whereas the Information Age swept to all parts of the globe in just a few years, as a result of

9180-402: The Southeast Asia trading system, bringing it contact with Asia; this resulted in the Swahili culture . China experienced the relatively successive Sui, Tang, Song , Yuan , and early Ming dynasties . Middle Eastern trade routes along the Indian Ocean, and the Silk Road through the Gobi Desert , provided limited economic and cultural contact between Asian and European civilizations. During

9315-403: The United States; their first survey showed that 8.2% of all U.S. households owned a personal computer in 1984, and that households with children under the age of 18 were nearly twice as likely to own one at 15.3% (middle and upper middle class households were the most likely to own one, at 22.9%). By 1989, 15% of all U.S. households owned a computer, and nearly 30% of households with children under

9450-551: The administration of cities, the expression of ideas, and the preservation of information. It may have independently developed in at least four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (3300 BCE), Egypt (around 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and lowland Mesoamerica (by 650 BCE). The earliest system of writing was the Mesopotamian cuneiform script , which began as a system of pictographs , whose pictorial representations eventually became simplified and more abstract. Other influential early writing systems include Egyptian hieroglyphs and

9585-448: The advent of the Paleolithic era. The genus Homo evolved from Australopithecus . The earliest record of Homo is the 2.8 million-year-old specimen LD 350-1 from Ethiopia, and the earliest named species is Homo habilis which evolved by 2.3 million years ago. The most important difference between Homo habilis and Australopithecus was a 50% increase in brain size. H. erectus evolved about 2 million years ago and

9720-458: The age of 18 owned one. By the late 1980s, many businesses were dependent on computers and digital technology. Motorola created the first mobile phone, Motorola DynaTac , in 1983. However, this device used analog communication - digital cell phones were not sold commercially until 1991 when the 2G network started to be opened in Finland to accommodate the unexpected demand for cell phones that

9855-465: The basis of CMOS and DRAM technology today. In 1957 at Bell Labs, Frosch and Derick were able to manufacture planar silicon dioxide transistors, later a team at Bell Labs demonstrated a working MOSFET. The first integrated circuit milestone was achieved by Jack Kilby in 1958. Other important technological developments included the invention of the monolithic integrated circuit chip by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, made possible by

9990-613: The beginnings of archaic globalization . Bronze production in Southwest Asia, for example, required the import of tin from as far away as England. The growth of cities was often followed by the establishment of states and empires. In Egypt, the initial division into Upper and Lower Egypt was followed by the unification of the whole valley around 3100 BCE. Around 2600 BCE, the Indus Valley civilization built major cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro . Mesopotamian history

10125-494: The complexity of the Z1 and Z2 , German inventor Konrad Zuse used electromechanical systems to complete in 1941 the Z3 , the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. Also during World War II, Allied engineers constructed electromechanical bombes to break German Enigma machine encoding. The base-10 electromechanical Harvard Mark I was completed in 1944, and

10260-410: The creation of the first cities and states . Cities were centers of trade , manufacturing , and political power . They developed mutually beneficial relationships with their surrounding countrysides , receiving agricultural products and providing manufactured goods and varying degrees of political control in return. Early proto-cities appeared at Çatalhöyük and Jericho , possibly as early as

10395-574: The desert called Nazca lines . The Olmecs of Mesoamerica developed by about 1200 BCE and are known for the colossal stone heads that they carved from basalt . They also devised the Mesoamerican calendar that was used by later cultures such as the Maya and Teotihuacan . Societies in North America were primarily egalitarian hunter-gatherers, supplementing their diet with the plants of

10530-683: The different civilizations in the process of globalization , and cemented European dominance throughout the 19th century. Over the last quarter-millennium, despite the devastating effects of two world wars , there has been a great acceleration in the rates of growth of many domains, including human population , agriculture, industry, commerce, scientific knowledge, technology, communications, military capabilities, and environmental degradation . The study of human history relies on insights from academic disciplines including history , archaeology , anthropology , linguistics , and genetics . To provide an accessible overview, researchers divide human history by

10665-848: The discovery by Myriad Genetics of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene mutation. Sequence data in Genbank has grown from the 606 genome sequences registered in December 1982 to the 231 million genomes in August 2021. An additional 13 trillion incomplete sequences are registered in the Whole Genome Shotgun submission database as of August 2021. The information contained in these registered sequences has doubled every 18 months. During rare times in human history, there have been periods of innovation that have transformed human life. The Neolithic Age ,

10800-633: The displacement of the Pygmy peoples and the Khoisan , and in the spread of mixed farming and ironworking throughout sub-Saharan Africa, laying the foundations for later states. The Lapita culture emerged in the Bismarck Archipelago near New Guinea around 1500 BCE and colonized many uninhabited islands of Remote Oceania , reaching as far as Samoa by 700 BCE. In the Americas,

10935-560: The end of the Ice Age some 12,000 years ago, humans had colonized nearly all ice-free parts of the globe. Human expansion coincided with both the Quaternary extinction event and the Neanderthal extinction . These extinctions were probably caused by climate change, human activity, or a combination of the two. Beginning around 10,000 BCE, the Neolithic Revolution marked the development of agriculture , which fundamentally changed

11070-436: The expenditure stream and by injecting water (investment income) into that stream. When the savings flow exceeds the investment flow, the level of water in the savings and investment tank (the surplus-balances tank) would rise to reflect the accumulated balance. When the investment flow exceeds the savings flow for any length of time, the surplus-balances tank would run dry. Import and export were represented by water draining from

11205-455: The first single-chip microprocessor. It was released by Intel in 1971, and laid the foundations for the microcomputer revolution that began in the 1970s. MOS technology also led to the development of semiconductor image sensors suitable for digital cameras . The first such image sensor was the charge-coupled device , developed by Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith at Bell Labs in 1969, based on MOS capacitor technology. The public

11340-405: The following year. In 2002, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having a mobile phone . In late 2005 the population of the Internet reached 1 billion, and 3 billion people worldwide used cell phones by the end of the decade. HDTV became the standard television broadcasting format in many countries by the end of the decade. In September and December 2006 respectively, Luxembourg and

11475-648: The frontiers hastened internal dissolution. The Han dynasty fell into civil war in 220 CE, beginning the Three Kingdoms period, while its Roman counterpart became increasingly decentralized and divided about the same time in what is known as the Crisis of the Third Century . From the Eurasian Steppe, horse-based nomads dominated a large part of the continent. The development of the stirrup and

11610-626: The groundwork for the advent of civilization. The Scientific Age began in the period between Galileo 's 1543 proof that the planets orbit the Sun and Newton 's publication of the laws of motion and gravity in Principia in 1697. This age of discovery continued through the 18th century, accelerated by widespread use of the moveable type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg . The Industrial Age began in Great Britain in 1760 and continued into

11745-754: The human ability to communicate. Signs of early artistic expression can be found in the form of cave paintings and sculptures made from ivory, stone, and bone, implying a form of spirituality generally interpreted as animism or shamanism . The earliest known musical instruments besides the human voice are bone flutes from the Swabian Jura in Germany, dated around 40,000 years old. Paleolithic humans lived as hunter-gatherers and were generally nomadic . The migration of anatomically modern humans out of Africa took place in multiple waves beginning 194,000–177,000 years ago. The dominant view among scholars

11880-515: The human lifestyle. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa , in at least 11 separate centers of origin . Cereal crop cultivation and animal domestication had occurred in Mesopotamia by at least 8500 BCE in the form of wheat, barley , sheep, and goats. The Yangtze River Valley in China domesticated rice around 8000–7000 BCE;

12015-424: The information equivalent of 174 newspapers per person per day. The world's effective capacity to exchange information through two-way Telecommunications networks was 281 petabytes of (optimally compressed) information in 1986; 471 petabytes in 1993; 2.2 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2000; and 65 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 2007, the information equivalent of six newspapers per person per day. In

12150-440: The last mile (where analogue continued to be the norm right into the late 1990s). Following the development of MOS integrated circuit chips in the early 1960s, MOS chips reached higher transistor density and lower manufacturing costs than bipolar integrated circuits by 1964. MOS chips further increased in complexity at a rate predicted by Moore's law , leading to large-scale integration (LSI) with hundreds of transistors on

12285-697: The late 1340s, and killed tens of millions of Europeans in six years; between a quarter and a third of the population perished. Africa was home to many different civilizations. In the 7th century North Africa saw the extinguishment of Byzantine Africa and the Berber kingdoms in the Early Muslim conquests . From the 10th century the Arabian empire's African territory was consumed by the Fatimid Caliphate centred on Egypt, who were supplanted by

12420-545: The late 14th century formed a personal union with Poland . The Late Middle Ages were marked by difficulties and calamities. Famine, plague, and war devastated the population of Western Europe. The Black Death alone killed approximately 75 to 200 million people between 1347 and 1350. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. Starting in Asia, the disease reached the Mediterranean and Western Europe during

12555-696: The late 1980s, less than 1% of the world's technologically stored information was in digital format, while it was 94% in 2007, with more than 99% by 2014. It is estimated that the world's capacity to store information has increased from 2.6 (optimally compressed) exabytes in 1986, to some 5,000 exabytes in 2014 (5 zettabytes ). Library expansion was calculated in 1945 by Fremont Rider to double in capacity every 16 years where sufficient space made available. He advocated replacing bulky, decaying printed works with miniaturized microform analog photographs , which could be duplicated on-demand for library patrons and other institutions. Rider did not foresee, however,

12690-521: The late 1990s worldwide, except for in the United States of America where text messaging didn't become commonplace till the early 2000s. The digital revolution became truly global in this time as well - after revolutionizing society in the developed world in the 1990s, the digital revolution spread to the masses in the developing world in the 2000s. By 2000, a majority of U.S. households had at least one personal computer and internet access

12825-684: The late 5th century BCE, several Greek city states checked the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars . These wars were followed by the Golden Age of Athens , the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilization , including the first theatrical performances . The wars led to the creation of the Delian League , founded in 477 BCE, and eventually

12960-416: The main factor, leading people to seek out new food sources. Others see population growth not as the cause but as the effect of the associated improvements in food supply. Further suggested factors include climate change, resource scarcity, and ideology. The transition to agriculture created food surpluses that could support people not directly engaged in food production, permitting far denser populations and

13095-409: The mid-19th century. The invention of machines such as the mechanical textile weaver by Edmund Cartwrite, the rotating shaft steam engine by James Watt and the cotton gin by Eli Whitney , along with processes for mass manufacturing, came to serve the needs of a growing global population. The Industrial Age harnessed steam and waterpower to reduce the dependence on animal and human physical labor as

13230-427: The model and by additional water being poured into the model. The flow of the water was automatically controlled through a series of floats, counterweights, electrodes, and cords. When the level of water reached a certain level in a tank, pumps and drains would be activated. To their surprise, Phillips and his associate Walter Newlyn found that machine could be calibrated to an accuracy of 2%. The flow of water between

13365-579: The most notable being the Zapotec civilization (700 BCE–1521 CE), and the Maya civilization, which reached its highest state of development during the Mesoamerican classic period (c. 250–900 CE), but continued throughout the post-classic period. The great Maya city-states slowly rose in number and prominence, and Maya culture spread throughout the Yucatán and surrounding areas. The Maya developed

13500-589: The new standard in business, a relatively new job description was popularized, the data entry clerk . Culled from the ranks of secretaries and typists from earlier decades, the data entry clerk's job was to convert analog data (customer records, invoices, etc.) into digital data. In developed nations, computers achieved semi-ubiquity during the 1980s as they made their way into schools, homes, business, and industry. Automated teller machines , industrial robots , CGI in film and television, electronic music , bulletin board systems , and video games all fueled what became

13635-432: The operation of complex models. Observing the machine in operation made it much easier for students to understand the interrelated processes of a national economy. The range of organisations that acquired a machine showed that it was used in both capacities. The machine is approximately 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high, 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) wide and almost 1 m (3 ft 3 in) deep, and consisted of

13770-495: The period referred to as ancient India's golden age. The resulting stability helped usher in a flourishing period for Hindu and Buddhist culture in the 4th and 5th centuries, as well as major advances in science and mathematics. In South India , three prominent Dravidian kingdoms emerged: the Cheras , Cholas , and Pandyas . In China, Qin Shi Huang put an end to the chaotic Warring States period by uniting all of China under

13905-401: The popular medium of choice. Humans have manufactured tools for counting and calculating since ancient times, such as the abacus , astrolabe , equatorium , and mechanical timekeeping devices. More complicated devices started appearing in the 1600s, including the slide rule and mechanical calculators . By the early 1800s, the Industrial Revolution had produced mass-market calculators like

14040-729: The population, though Buddhism remained strong in the east. From the 9th to 13th centuries, Central Asia was divided among several powerful states, including the Samanid , Seljuk , and Khwarazmian Empires . These states were succeeded by the Mongols in the 13th century. In 1370, Timur , a Turkic leader in the Mongol military tradition, conquered most of the region and founded the Timurid Empire . Timur's large empire collapsed soon after his death, but his descendants retained control of

14175-581: The primary means of production. Thus, the core of the Industrial Revolution was the generation and distribution of energy from coal and water to produce steam and, later in the 20th century, electricity. History by period Human history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present . Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers . They migrated out of Africa during

14310-1215: The rapidly advancing speed of information exchange. Between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago during the Neolithic period, humans began to domesticate animals, began to farm grains and to replace stone tools with ones made of metal. These innovations allowed nomadic hunter-gatherers to settle down. Villages formed along the Yangtze River in China in 6,500 B.C., the Nile River region of Africa and in Mesopotamia ( Iraq ) in 6,000 B.C. Cities emerged between 6,000 B.C. and 3,500 B.C. The development of written communication ( cuneiform in Sumeria and hieroglyphs in Egypt in 3,500 B.C. and writing in Egypt in 2,560 B.C. and in Minoa and China around 1,450 B.C.) enabled ideas to be preserved for extended periods to spread extensively. In all, Neolithic developments, augmented by writing as an information tool, laid

14445-652: The remains of the Western Roman Empire. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, most of the new kingdoms incorporated existing Roman institutions. Christianity expanded in Western Europe, and monasteries were founded. In the 7th and 8th centuries, the Franks under the Carolingian dynasty established an empire covering much of Western Europe; it lasted until

14580-653: The same period, civilizations in the Americas, such as the Mississippians , Aztecs , Maya, and Inca reached their zenith. Before the advent of Islam in the 7th century, the Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires, which frequently fought each other for control of several disputed regions. This was also a cultural battle, with Byzantine Christian culture competing against Persian Zoroastrian traditions. The birth of Islam created

14715-410: The species Homo heidelbergensis . Humans continued to develop over the succeeding millennia, and by 100,000 years ago, were using jewelry and ocher to adorn the body. By 50,000 years ago, they buried their dead, used projectile weapons, and engaged in seafaring. One of the most important changes (the date of which is unknown) was the development of syntactic language , which dramatically improved

14850-589: The spread of Greek culture throughout conquered regions, a process referred to as Hellenization . The Hellenistic period lasted from the death of Alexander in 323 BCE to 31 BCE when Ptolemaic Egypt fell to Rome. In Europe, the Roman Republic was founded in the 6th century BCE and began expanding its territory in the 3rd century BCE. Priorly, the Carthaginian Empire had dominated the Mediterranean, however lost three successive wars to

14985-497: The state religion. During the High Middle Ages , which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and crop yields to increase. The establishment of the feudal system affected the structure of medieval society. It included manorialism , the organization of peasants into villages that owed rents and labor service to nobles, and vassalage ,

15120-412: The tanks was determined by economic principles and the settings for various parameters. Different economic parameters, such as tax rates and investment rates, could be entered by setting the valves which controlled the flow of water about the computer. Users could experiment with different settings and note their effects. The machine's ability to model the subtle interaction of a number of variables made it

15255-493: The use of horse archers made the nomads a constant threat to sedentary civilizations. In the 4th century CE, the Roman Empire split into western and eastern regions, with usually separate emperors. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE to German influence under Odoacer . The Eastern Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire , was more long-lasting. In China, dynasties rose and fell, but, in sharp contrast to

15390-558: The way for the emergence of early civilizations in Mesopotamia , Egypt , the Indus Valley , and China , marking the beginning of the Ancient period in 3500 BCE. These civilizations supported the establishment of regional empires and acted as a fertile ground for the advent of transformative philosophical and religious ideas, initially Hinduism during the late Bronze Age , and later Buddhism , Confucianism , Greek philosophy , Jainism , Judaism , Taoism , and Zoroastrianism during

15525-638: The world and trade between societies intensified. From the 10th to 13th centuries, the Medieval Warm Period in the northern hemisphere aided agriculture and led to population growth in parts of Europe and Asia. It was followed by the Little Ice Age , which, along with the plagues of the 14th century, put downward pressure on the population of Eurasia. Major inventions of the period were gunpowder , guns, and printing, all of which originated in China. The post-classical period encompasses

15660-561: The world. As of 2023 , several are in working order. Phillips scrounged materials to create his prototype computer, including bits and pieces of war surplus parts from old Lancaster bombers . The first MONIAC was created in his landlady's garage in Croydon at a cost of £ 400 (equivalent to £18,000 in 2023). Phillips first demonstrated the machine to leading economists at the London School of Economics (LSE), of which Phillips

15795-477: The zeitgeist of the 1980s. Millions of people purchased home computers, making household names of early personal computer manufacturers such as Apple , Commodore, and Tandy. To this day the Commodore 64 is often cited as the best selling computer of all time, having sold 17 million units (by some accounts) between 1982 and 1994. In 1984, the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting data on computer and Internet use in

15930-535: Was legalized by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution . It became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE while the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions in 391–392 CE. In South Asia, Chandragupta Maurya founded the Maurya Empire (320–185 BCE), which flourished under Ashoka the Great . From the 4th to 6th centuries CE, the Gupta Empire oversaw

16065-556: Was a student, in 1949. It was very well received and Phillips was soon offered a teaching position at the LSE. The machine had been designed as a teaching aid but was also discovered to be an effective economic simulator. When the machine was created, electronic digital computers that could run complex economic simulations were unavailable. In 1949, the few computers in existence were restricted to government and military use and their lack of adequate visual displays made them unable to illustrate

16200-488: Was able to amplify the digital signal and pass it on with no loss of information in the signal. Of equal importance to the revolution was the ability to easily move the digital information between media, and to access or distribute it remotely. One turning point of the revolution was the change from analog to digitally recorded music. During the 1980s the digital format of optical compact discs gradually replaced analog formats, such as vinyl records and cassette tapes , as

16335-624: Was also invented in the late 1980s. Disney's CAPS system (created 1988) was used for a scene in 1989's The Little Mermaid and for all their animation films between 1990's The Rescuers Down Under and 2004's Home on the Range . Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. The first public digital HDTV broadcast was of the 1990 World Cup that June; it was played in 10 theaters in Spain and Italy. However, HDTV did not become

16470-484: Was becoming apparent in the late 1980s. Compute! magazine predicted that CD-ROM would be the centerpiece of the revolution, with multiple household devices reading the discs. The first true digital camera was created in 1988, and the first were marketed in December 1989 in Japan and in 1990 in the United States. By the early 2000s, digital cameras had eclipsed traditional film in popularity. Digital ink and paint

16605-584: Was characterized by frequent wars between city-states, leading to shifts in hegemony from one city to another. In the 25th–21st centuries BCE, the empires of Akkad and the Neo-Sumerians arose in this area. In Crete, the Minoan civilization emerged by 2000 BCE and is regarded as the first civilization in Europe. Over the following millennia, civilizations developed across the world. By 1600 BCE, Mycenaean Greece began to develop. It flourished until

16740-524: Was comparable in power and influence to the Roman Empire that lay at the other end of the Silk Road. As economic prosperity fueled their military expansion, the Han conquered parts of Mongolia, Central Asia, Manchuria , Korea, and northern Vietnam. As with other empires during the classical period, Han China advanced significantly in the areas of government, education, science, and technology. The Han invented

16875-538: Was created in 1949 by the New Zealand economist Bill Phillips to model the national economic processes of the United Kingdom , while Phillips was a student at the London School of Economics (LSE). While designed as a teaching tool, it was discovered to be quite accurate, and thus an effective economic simulator. At least twelve machines were built, donated to or purchased by various organisations around

17010-500: Was first introduced to the concepts that led to the Internet when a message was sent over the ARPANET in 1969. Packet switched networks such as ARPANET, Mark I , CYCLADES , Merit Network , Tymnet , and Telenet , were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of protocols . The ARPANET in particular led to the development of protocols for internetworking , in which multiple separate networks could be joined into

17145-645: Was institutionalized by the Achaemenid Empire during the Axial Age. New philosophies took hold in Greece during the 5th century BCE, epitomized by thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle . The first Olympic Games were held in 776 BCE, marking a period known as " classical antiquity ". In 508 BCE, the world's first democratic system of government was instituted in Athens . Axial Age ideas shaped subsequent intellectual and religious history. Confucianism

17280-561: Was not a simple linear or branched progression but involved interbreeding between related species . Genomic research has shown that hybridization between substantially diverged lineages was common in human evolution. DNA evidence suggests that several genes of Neanderthal origin are present among all non- sub-Saharan African populations. Neanderthals and other hominins, such as Denisovans, may have contributed up to 6% of their genome to present-day non-sub-Saharan African humans. Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago from

17415-432: Was one of the outstanding artistic achievements of the age. The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of Northern and Western Europe and lasted until the beginning of the early modern period in the 16th century. The Mongols reached Europe in 1236 and conquered Kievan Rus' , along with briefly invading Poland and Hungary . Lithuania cooperated with the Mongols but remained independent and in

17550-468: Was one of the three schools of thought that came to dominate Chinese thinking, along with Taoism and Legalism . The Confucian tradition, which would become particularly influential, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition. Confucianism would later spread to Korea and Japan. Buddhism reached China in about the 1st century CE and spread widely, with 30,000 Buddhist temples in northern China alone by

17685-449: Was particularly prevalent in Athens and Rome , where slaves made up a large proportion of the population and were foundational to the economy. Patriarchy was also common, with men controlling more political and economic power than women. The ancient empires faced common problems associated with maintaining huge armies and supporting a central bureaucracy . In Rome and Han China, the state began to decline, and barbarian pressure on

17820-576: Was succeeded by the Christian kingdoms of Makuria , Alodia , and Nobatia . In the 7th century Makuria conquered Nobatia to become the dominant power in the region and resisted Muslim expansion. They later entered a severe decline following civil war and Arab migrations to the Sudan and had disintegrated by the 15th century, giving rise to the Funj Sultanate . Phillips Machine It

17955-458: Was the first financial institution to offer online internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994. In 1996 OP Financial Group , also a cooperative bank , became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe. The Internet expanded quickly, and by 1996, it was part of mass culture and many businesses listed websites in their ads. By 1999, almost every country had

18090-680: Was the first hominin species to leave Africa and disperse across Eurasia. Perhaps as early as 1.5 million years ago, but certainly by 250,000 years ago, hominins began to use fire for heat and cooking. Beginning about 500,000 years ago, Homo diversified into many new species of archaic humans such as the Neanderthals in Europe, the Denisovans in Siberia , and the diminutive H. floresiensis in Indonesia . Human evolution

18225-526: Was to some degree improved with inspiration from Charles Babbage's designs. In 1947, the first working transistor , the germanium -based point-contact transistor , was invented by John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs . This led the way to more advanced digital computers . From the late 1940s, universities, military, and businesses developed computer systems to digitally replicate and automate previously manually performed mathematical calculations, with

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