Information Age
• Highly modernized, automated, datadriven, and technologically advanced – these best describe our
society nowadays, as evidenced by how information could be transferred or shared quickly.
• The information age began around 1970’s and is still going today. It is also known as the computer age,
digital age, or new media age.
History of Information Age
3000 BC- • Sumerian writing system used pictographs to represent words. (Sumerian Writing
Pictographs)
2900 BC- • Beginnings of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. (Egyptian Hieroglyphic Writing)
1300 BC- • Tortoise shell and oracle bone writing were used. (Turtle Shell and Oracle Bone)
500 BC- • Papyrus roll was used. (Papyrus Roll)
220 BC- • Chinese small seal writing was developed. (Chinese Small Seal Writing)
100 AD- • Book (parchment codex)
105 AD- • Woodblock printing and paper was invented by the Chinese. (Woodblock Printing and
Paper)
1455- • Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press using movable metal type.
1755- • Samuel Johnson’s dictionary standardized English spelling. (Samuel Johnson Dictionary
Standardized English Language)
1802- • The Library of Congress was established. Invention of the carbon arc lamp. (Library
Congress, Carbon Arc Lamp)
1824- •Research on persistence of vision published.
1830’s- • First viable design for a digital computer. • Augusta Lady Byron writes the world’s first
computer program. (John Vincent Atanasoff, Augusta Ada Lovelace)
1837- • Invention of the telegraph in Great Britain and the United States.
1876- • Dewey Decimal system was introduced.
1877- • Eadweard Muybridge demonstrated highspeed photography.
1899- •First magnetic recordings were released.
1902- • Motion picture special effects were used.
1906- • Lee DeForest invented the electronic amplifying tube (triode).
1923- • Television camera tube was invented by Zworykin.
1945- • Vannevar Bush foresaw the invention of hypertext.
1946- •ENIAC computer was developed.
1948- • Birth of field-of information theory proposed by Claude E. Shannon.
1957- • Planar transistor was developed by Jean Hoerni.
1958- •First integrated circuit.
1960’s- • Library of Congress developed LC MARC (machinereadable code).
1969- • UNIX operating system was developed, which could handle multitasking.
