Civilisation/Technology
Computing
History of Computing
1801
Joseph Jacquard created a punch-card programmable loom which greatly simplified the weaving process.
1837
The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's Difference Engine.
1843
Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, worked closely with Charles Babbage. She wrote a plan for how the Bernoulli numbers might be calculated, which is widely regarded as the first computer program.
1936
Alan Turing invented the Turing Machine, a mathematical model of computation describing an abstract machine that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Computers to this day emulate this functionality of reading simple binary input and computing a logical output. This relatively simple machine enables the computation of any algorithm.
1944
The Colossus machines were electronic computing devices used by British codebreakers to read encrypted German messages during World War II. These were the world's first programmable, digital, electronic, computing devices. They used vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) to perform the calculations. Colossus was designed by engineer Tommy Flowers
1946
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was designed for the US Army.
1947
William Shockley of Bell Labs invented the first transistor.
1949
EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory. Later the project was supported by J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., who were rewarded with the first commercially applied computer, LEO I (Lyons Electronic Office I), based on the EDSAC design.
1951
Ferranti Mark I was the world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer. The first machine was delivered to the University of Manchester in February 1951, just ahead of the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) which was delivered to the United States Census Bureau a month later.
1958
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce created the first integrated circuit, commonly known as a microchip. An integrated circuit consists of electronic circuits mounted onto a semiconductor.
1964
The CDC 6600 was manufactured by Control Data Corporation. Generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, it was designed by Seymour Cray.
1964
Douglas Engelbart invented the computer mouse. It was built of a wooden case with two wheels and a button on top.
1969
ARPANET was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control. It was the precursor to the Internet.
1971
Intel released the first microprocessor, the 4-bit Intel 4004.
1971
Email was invented by Ray Tomlinson.
1974
The term “Internet” was first used.
1975
Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800.
1976
Apple-1 was released. It was an 8-bit computer designed by Steve Wozniak. To finance its creation, Steve Jobs sold his Volkswagen Bus, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator. Production was discontinued in September 1977 after the introduction of its successor, the Apple II.
1981
IBM launched its first personal computer, the IBM Model-5150.
1982
Sinclair ZX spectrum was released.
1984
Apple Mac was released.
1985
Microsoft released its first version of the Windows operating system.
1989
The World Wide Web was created by Tim Berners-Lee.
1990
Microsoft Office was released.
1995
Java programing language was developed by James Gosling of Sun Microsystems.
1998
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University.
1998
The first quantum computer was created.
2012
Raspberry Pi single-board computer was released at a cost of £35. By December 2019, a total of 30 million devices had been sold. It was designed for the teaching of basic computer science in schools but has also been used in commercial applications.
Personal Computers
Altair 8800 was the first commercially successful personal computer. It was advertised on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975 and was sold by mail order. It was designed by MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) and was based on the Intel 8080 processor.
Commodore PET was released in 1977 by Commodore International. It contained an 8-bit microprocessor and included a version of BASIC in read-only memory. PET was a backronym of Personal Electronic Transactor. 219,000 units were sold.
IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) was the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line. Based on the Intel 8088 microprocessor. The operating system was IBM PC DOS, developed by Microsoft. The starting price was US$1,565 (equivalent to $5,040 in 2022).
Osborne 1 was the first commercially successful portable computer. It was released in 1981 and weighed 11 kg. The microprocessor was a Zilog Z80 and the operating system was CP/M.
BBC Micro was a series of microcomputers designed and built in the 1980s by Acorn Computers, headed by Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry, for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The CPU was an 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 and the programming language was BBC BASIC. An accompanying 1982 television series, The Computer Programme, featuring Chris Serle learning to use the machine, was broadcast on BBC2.
ZX Spectrum was developed by Sinclair Research and was Britain's best-selling microcomputer, selling 5 million units. The initial cost of the 16 KB machine was £125. It was the successor to the ZX80 and ZX81 machines. The original ZX Spectrum had a rubber keyboard. The microprocessor was an 8-bit Z80. Sinclair licensed the Spectrum design to Timex Corporation in the United States.
Commodore 64 was an 8-bit computer released in 1982. It was the highest-selling single computer model of all time, with estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. The machine took its name from its 64 kilobytes of RAM.
Operating Systems
CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) was created in 1974 for Intel 8080/85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. It was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s but was eventually displaced by DOS following the 1981 introduction of the IBM PC.
MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. IBM PC DOS is a rebranded version of MS-DOS. In 1980 IBM approached Digital Research, at Bill Gates' suggestion, to license a forthcoming version of CP/M for its new product, the IBM Personal Computer. Upon the failure to obtain a signed non-disclosure agreement, the talks failed, and IBM instead contracted with Microsoft to provide an operating system. The resulting product, MS-DOS, soon began outselling CP/M.
Microsoft Windows is the most popular desktop operating system in the world, with a 70% market share.
List of Microsoft Windows versions
| Version | Release date[Ek1] |
| Windows 1.0 | 1985 |
| Windows 2.0 | 1987 |
| Windows 2.1x | 1988 |
| Windows 3.0 | 1990 |
| Windows 3.1 | 1992 |
| Windows NT 3.1 | 1993 |
| Windows 3.2 | 1993 |
| Windows NT 3.5 | 1994 |
| Windows NT 3.51 | 1995 |
| Windows 95 | 1995 |
| Windows NT 4.0 | 1995 |
| Windows 98 | 1998 |
| Windows 2000 | 2000 |
| Windows ME | 2000 |
| Windows XP | 2001 |
| Windows XP Professional x64 Edition | 2005 |
| Windows Vista | 2007 |
| Windows 7 | 2009 |
| Windows 8 | 2012 |
| Windows 8.1 | 2013 |
| Windows 10 | 2015 |
| Windows 11 | 2021 |
Windows 1.0 replaced MS-DOS.
Windows NT is a multiprocessing and multi-user operating system.
Windows 95 introduced the Start menu. The Windows 95 release included a commercial featuring The Rolling Stones' 1981 single "Start Me Up" (a reference to the Start button). Microsoft paid the Rolling Stones $3 million for the rights to “Start Me Up”. Windows 95 was bundled as a standalone operating system that did not require a separate DOS license.
Windows ME (Millennium Edition) became infamously known by many as one of the worst versions of Windows ever released, mainly due to stability problems.
Windows Vista received poor reviews, mainly for its much higher hardware requirements and perceived slowness compared to Windows XP.
Windows 8 received a mostly negative reception. The new user interface of the operating system was widely criticized for being confusing and unintuitive.
Windows 10 reintroduced the Start menu, and incorporated Microsoft's intelligent personal assistant, Cortana. Internet Explorer was replaced with Microsoft Edge.
Mac OS was developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The Macintosh operating system is credited with having popularized the graphical user interface concept.
macOS succeeded the classic Mac OS. In 1985 Apple cofounder Steve Jobs had left Apple and started another company, NeXT, developing the NeXTSTEP platform that would later be acquired by Apple to form the basis of macOS.
List of macOS versions
| Version | Release name | Release date |
| Mac OS X 10.0 | Cheetah | 2001 |
| Mac OS X 10.1 | Puma | 2001 |
| Mac OS X 10.2 | Jaguar | 2002 |
| Mac OS X 10.3 | Panther | 2003 |
| Mac OS X 10.4 | Tiger | 2005 |
| Mac OS X 10.5 | Leopard | 2007 |
| Mac OS X 10.6 | Snow Leopard | 2009 |
| Mac OS X 10.7 | Lion | 2011 |
| Mac OS X 10.8 | Mountain Lion | 2012 |
| Mac OS X 10.9 | Mavericks | 2013 |
| Mac OS X 10.10 | Yosemite | 2014 |
| Mac OS X 10.11 | El Capitan | 2015 |
| macOS 10.12 | Sierra | 2016 |
| macOS 10.13 | High Sierra | 2017 |
| macOS 10.14 | Mojave | 2018 |
| macOS 10.15 | Catalina | 2019 |
| macOS 11 | Big Sur | 2020 |
| macOS 12 | Monterey | 2021 |
| macOS 13 | Ventura | 2022 |
| macOS 14 | Sonoma | Announced on 5 June 2023 |
Unix is a family of multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development was started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.
Almost the entire operating system is written in the C programming language.
Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released in 1991 by Finnish-American software engineer Linus Torvalds.
Popular Linux distributions include Debian, Fedora Linux, and Ubuntu. Commercial distributions include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise.
Tux is the penguin mascot of the Linux kernel, and is based on an image created by Larry Ewing in 1996.
ChromeOS is a Linux-based operating system developed and designed by Google. Laptops or tablets running ChromeOS are known as Chromebooks.
Programming languages
FORTRAN (Formula Translation) was originally developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and engineering applications, and subsequently came to dominate scientific computing.
COBOL was designed in 1959 by CODASYL and was partly based on the programming language FLOW-MATIC designed by Grace Hopper. It was created as part of a US Department of Defense effort to create a portable programming language for data processing. It is primarily used in business, finance, and administrative systems.
BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) was created by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. It became the de facto programming language for home computer systems that usually had a BASIC interpreter installed by default.
Pascal is a procedural programming language, designed by Niklaus Wirth and intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring. It is based on the ALGOL 60 language.
Ada is an object-oriented high-level programming language designed for the United States Department of Defense (DoD). Ada was named after Ada Lovelace.
C was developed by Dennis Ritchie between 1969 and 1973 at AT&T Bell Labs to construct utilities running on Unix. C is widely used for systems programming in implementing operating systems and embedded system applications.
C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell Labs. It is as an extension of the C programming language and has object-oriented features.
C# is based on the C family of languages, and has similarities to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript. It was designed by Anders Hejlsberg from Microsoft in 2000.
Java is a high-level, object-oriented programming language used to create complete applications. The language is platform independent, allowing it to run on any device that supports its environment. Java was originally developed by James Gosling as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The Java logo is a cup of coffee, and the mascot is a cartoon character named Duke.
Python is a general-purpose programming language created by Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991. Python's name is derived from the British comedy troupe Monty Python.
Ruby was developed by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan and released in 1995. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity.
Go is an object-oriented programming language that Google created in 2009 for networking and infrastructure. It has evolved into a general-purpose language used in a wide range of applications.
Kotlin was designed by JetBrains, a company based in Prague. Kotlin is designed to interoperate fully with Java, and is used by Android app developers. The name comes from Kotlin Island, near Saint Petersburg.
R is an open-source programming language for statistical computing and data analysis.
JavaScript is a dynamic scripting language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web. It was designed by Brendan Eich of Netscape and released in 1995.
PHP is a widely-used open source and general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development. PHP’s popularity is owed to the fact that it was one of the first server-side languages that developers could embed into HTML. It was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995. PHP was originally an abbreviation of Personal Home Page, but it now stands for the recursive initialism PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
Computer security
Types of attack –
Malware ('malicious software') is any program or file that is harmful to a computer user. Malware can be divided into a number of types –
Virus - replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code into those programs. Once downloaded, opened or executed, the virus can piggyback onto programs to corrupt data.
Worm - a standalone program that replicates itself in order to spread to other computers. Creeper was the first computer worm, while Reaper was the first antivirus software, designed to eliminate Creeper. Reaper was created by Ray Tomlinson in 1972.
Stuxnet is a computer worm discovered in 2010. It initially spread via Microsoft Windows, and targeted Siemens industrial software and equipment. Different variants of Stuxnet targeted five Iranian organizations, with the probable target widely suspected to be uranium enrichment infrastructure in Iran.
Trojan horse - any malware that misleads users of its true intent by disguising itself as a standard program. It is unable to replicate itself.
Ransomware - comprises a class of malware which restricts access to the computer system that it infects, and demands a ransom paid to the creator of the malware in order for the restriction to be removed. Ransomware attacks are typically carried out using a Trojan disguised as a legitimate file that the user is tricked into downloading or opening when it arrives as an email attachment.
Rogue software - a form of malware and internet fraud that misleads users into believing there is a virus on their computer and aims to convince them to pay for a fake malware removal tool that actually installs malware on their computer.
Spyware - malware used to gain access to a user’s systems and monitor their data, files, and behavior. Spyware is frequently associated with advertising.
Terms used in connection with attacks –
Phishing – the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Smishing – similar to phishing, but the messages are sent via text messages rather than emails.
Vishing – similar to phishing, but the messages are sent via phone calls or voice mails rather than emails. Also known as voice phishing.
Whaling – a type of phishing attack where a particularly important person in an organisation is targeted.
Spoofing – a sort of fraud in which someone forges the sender’s identity and poses as a reputable source in order to obtain personal information, acquire money, spread malware, or steal data.
Doxing – short for "dropping dox," is an online attack in which hackers dig up personal information and documents – hence, the “dox” part of “dropping dox” – to expose the real identities of people hoping to remain anonymous.
Clickjacking – a malicious technique of tricking a user into clicking on something different from what the user perceives, thus potentially revealing confidential information.
Denial of service attack (DoS attack) – a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network. In a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack), the incoming traffic flooding the victim originates from many different sources, and is usually performed by a group of Internet-connected devices known as a botnet (a portmanteau of the words "robot" and "network").
Hackers
A hacker is able to subvert computer security. If doing so for malicious purposes, the person can also be called a cracker. There are three types of hackers –
Black hat – someone who maliciously searches for and exploits vulnerabilities in computer systems or networks, often using malware and other hacking techniques to do harm.
White hat – a security specialist hired to find vulnerabilities in software, hardware and networks that black hats may find and target. Unlike black hats, white hats only hack networks when legally permitted to do so. Also known as ethical hackers.
Grey hat – someone who exploits security vulnerabilities without malicious intent, like a white hat, but may use illegal methods to find flaws.
Anti-virus software
Norton AntiVirus
Founded by Peter Norton, Norton AntiVirus has been developed and distributed by Symantec since 1990. The product runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS.
The current Norton product, Norton 360, was developed by Gen Digital (formerly Symantec Corporation).
McAfee
John McAfee created VirusScan, the first commercial anti-virus software, in 1987.
In 2000, McAfee/Network Associates was the leading authority in educating and protecting people against the Love Bug or ILOVEYOU virus, one of the most destructive computer viruses in history.
Intel acquired McAfee in 2010.
Bitdefender
Bitdefender is a Romanian cybersecurity technology company headquartered in Bucharest. The company was founded in 2001 by the current CEO and main shareholder, Florin Talpes.
Kaspersky Anti-Virus
Kaspersky Lab is a Russian computer security company, co-founded by Natalia Kaspersky and Eugene Kaspersky in 1997, offering anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam, and anti-intrusion products.
In 2016 the software has about 400 million users and had the largest market-share of cybersecurity software vendors in Europe.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security banned Kaspersky products from all government departments in 2017.
Avast Antivirus
Avast was founded in Prague in 1988. The software is software are sold on a freemium model, where basic security features are free, but more advanced features require purchasing a premium version. The free version is also supported by ads.
In 2017 it had the largest share of the market for antivirus applications.
AVG was a cybersecurity software company founded in 1991 and it merged into Avast following an acquisition in 2017.
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computing resources, such as storage and infrastructure, as services over the internet. The market is currently dominated by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
iCloud allows users to store data such as music files for download to multiple devices such as iPhones, iPods, iPads, and personal computers running Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows on computer servers owned by Apple
File hosting
A file-hosting service is a hosting service on the internet that stores user data, like images, videos, and other types of data files. These services are secure and allow a user to store their files safely on the internet. Since the files are stored on the internet, they can be accessed from anywhere if the user has internet access.
Microsoft OneDrive is a file hosting service operated by Microsoft. First launched in 2007, it enables registered users to share and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web version of Microsoft Office. OneDrive offers 5 GB of storage space free of charge.
Quantum computing
A quantum computer is a device for computation that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from traditional computers based on transistors.
In quantum computing, a qubit or quantum bit is a unit of quantum information.
The field of quantum computing was initiated by the work of Paul Benioff and Yuri Manin in 1980, Richard Feynman in 1982, and David Deutsch in 1985.
IBM Quantum System One was the first commercial quantum computer.
It was hoped that a quantum computer could perform some calculations exponentially faster than any modern "classical" computer, but in 2023 classical computers outperform quantum computers for all real-world applications.
Office productivity software
Word processing
WordPerfect was the dominant player in the word processor market in the 1980s. Following a failed release for Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word took over the market.
Microsoft Word was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Commercial versions of Word are licensed as a standalone product or as a component of Microsoft Office. In the top menu, the icon for the save button is a floppy disk.
Spreadsheet
VisiCalc (visible calculator) was the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II in 1979. When Lotus 1-2-3 was launched in 1983, taking full advantage of the expanded memory and screen of the PC, VisiCalc sales practically ended overnight.
Lotus 1-2-3 was a state-of-the-art spreadsheet and the standard throughout the 1980s. Due to the lack of a graphical user interface Lotus was surpassed by Microsoft in the early 1990s and never recovered.
Microsoft Excel was launched in 1987. Excel was one of the first spreadsheet programs to use a graphical interface with pull down menus. The first version was only released for the Macintosh. It consists of 1048576 rows and 16384 columns, a row and column together make a cell.
Presentation program
Microsoft PowerPoint was created by Forethought, Inc. in 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoint three months after it appeared. PowerPoint was originally designed to provide visuals for group presentations within business organisations. PowerPoint's worldwide market share of presentation software is around 95%.
Microsoft Office
Office was first announced by Bill Gates in 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. The first version of Office contained Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Later versions included an email client (Outlook), a database management system (Access), and a desktop publishing app (Publisher). In Microsoft Office 2007, Calibri replaced Times New Roman as the default typeface in Word and replaced Arial as the default in PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. The branding Office 365 was first introduced in 2010 to refer to subscription-based software as a service platform for the corporate market. In October 2022, Microsoft announced that it would rebrand the product as "Microsoft 365".
Laptops
Acer
Acer is a Taiwanese company founded in 1976.
Current models – Aspire, Chromebook, Spin, Swift.
Apple
The MacBook Air is Apple's least expensive notebook computer and was released in 2008. The MacBook Pro is Apple's higher-end notebook available in 13-inch, 14-inch, and 16-inch configurations and was released in 2006.
Current models – MacBook Pro, MacBook Air.
Asus
Asus is a Taiwanese company founded in 1989.
Current models – Chromebook, Flip, Zenbook.
Lenovo
Lenovo is a Chinese company founded as Legend in 1984, and acquired IBM's personal computer business in 2005, including the ThinkPad laptop. The IdeaPad line of laptops was introduced in 2008. Lenovo has been the world's largest PC vendor by unit sales in every year since 2013, with the exception of 2017.
Current models – IdeaPad.
Dell
Dell was founded by Michael Dell in 1984 and is the world's 3rd-largest PC vendor by unit sales. The first Inspiron laptop model was introduced in 1997.
Current models – Inspiron, XPS.
HP
HP Inc. was formerly known as Hewlett-Packard. It is the world's 2nd-largest PC vendor by unit sales.
Current models – Envy, Pavilion, Chromebook, ProBook.
Microsoft
Microsoft Surface is a series of touchscreen-based personal computers, tablets, and interactive whiteboards designed and developed by Microsoft, most of them running the Windows operating system. They are designed to be premium devices.
Current models – Surface.
Tablet computers
A tablet is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery.
A 2-in-1 PC is a hybrid or combination of a tablet and laptop computer that has features of both. Distinct from tablets, 2-in-1 PCs all have physical keyboards.
A phablet is a mobile device combining or straddling the size formats of smartphones and tablets. The Sony Xperia Z Ultra is a 2013 Android phablet designed and manufactured by Sony Mobile
Market share (2022) – Apple 37%, Samsung 18%, Amazon 11%
Apple
The iPad was released in 2010. It features a multi-touch screen and a virtual onscreen keyboard. The iOS operating system was switched to iPadOS in 2019. Total sales exceed 670 million units.
iPad range consists of the original iPad lineup and three other products –
iPad Mini – a smaller tablet with screen sizes of 7.9 inches and 8.3 inches.
iPad Air – uses the Apple M1 chip.
iPad Pro – professional model with a screen size of 12.9 inches. Uses the Apple M2 chip.
Amazon
The Amazon Fire is built with Quanta Computer in Taiwan. The Kindle Fire was first released in 2011, featuring a colour 7-inch multi-touch and running on Fire OS. In 2014, when the fourth generation was introduced, the name "Kindle" was dropped. In later generations, the Fire tablet is also able to convert into a Smart speaker with interaction by voice command through Alexa.
Samsung
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is a line of Android OS tablet computers first released in 2010.
Internet
ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense, was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the contemporary global Internet. The packet switching of the ARPANET was based on designs by Lawrence Roberts, of the Lincoln Laboratory.
Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet. The foundational protocols in the suite are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and the Internet Protocol (IP).
Vinton Gray ‘Vint’ Cerf is an American Internet pioneer, who is recognized as one of ‘the fathers of the Internet’, sharing this title with Bob Kahn, for the invention of TCP/IP.
The Internet has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies. The overarching definitions of the two principal name spaces on the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code.
Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data.
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web, or Web, is an information system on the internet which allows documents to be connected to other documents by hypertext links, enabling the user to search for information by moving from one document to another.
The Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1999. He also made the world’s first web browser and web server. The first website built (info.cern.ch) was at CERN, and was first put online on 6 August 1991.
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) – the publishing format for the web. It includes the ability to format documents and link to other documents and resources.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) – a kind of 'address' that is unique to each resource on the web. It could be the address of a webpage or an image file.
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) – allows HTML documents to be requested and transmitted between browsers and web servers via the internet.
HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) – an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet.
Web browser – a tool that enables users to surf and access websites that are on the internet.
Web server – a computer where files are stored which can be accessed via the internet using HTTP or HTTPS.
Web 2.0 – the current state of the internet that has more user-generated content and usability for end-users than Web 1.0.
Cookie – a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user's computer by the user's web browser while the user is browsing.
Website development
LAMP is an acronym for an archetypal model of web service solution stacks, originally consisting of largely interchangeable components:
· Linux operating system
· Apache HTTP Server
· MySQL relational database management system
· PHP programming language
The ‘P’ in Lamp can also stand for Python or Perl
JavaScript is the dominant client-side scripting language of the Web, with 98% of all websites using it for this purpose. Scripts are embedded in or included from HTML documents. All major web browsers have a built-in JavaScript engine that executes the code on the user's device.
HTML is a markup language that web browsers use to interpret and compose text, images, and other material into visible or audible web pages.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML.
Ruby on Rails is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby.
WordPress is among the most popular content management systems. It is written in PHP.
Companies
Adobe Inc. was founded by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. Products include Adobe Photoshop image editing software, Adobe Illustrator vector-based illustration software, Adobe Acrobat Reader, and the Portable Document Format (PDF) that is based on the PostScript page description language.
ARM was founded as Advanced RISC Machines, ARM, a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology. Based in Cambridge, its primary business is the design of ARM processors (CPUs). Since 2016, it has been owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group.
Cisco Systems was founded in 1984 by Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner. John Chambers was CEO from 1995 to 2015. Cisco is known particularly for its networking hardware.
Compaq was founded in 1982 and rose to become the largest supplier of PC systems during the 1990s before being overtaken by Dell in 2001. The company was acquired for US$25 billion by HP in 2002. The brand remained in use by HP for lower-end systems until 2013 when it was discontinued.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) was founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and David Packard. HP was the world's leading PC manufacturer from 2007 until 2013, when Lenovo moved ahead of HP. In 2015 the former Hewlett-Packard Company changed its name to HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise was spun off as a newly created company.
Intel (From integrated and electronics) was founded in 1968. It is one of the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series of instruction sets found in most personal computers.
The Intel 4004 chip was released by Intel in 1971. It was the first commercially available microprocessor by Intel.
The x86 family is based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor.
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) was founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. During the 1960s and 1970s, the IBM mainframe, exemplified by the System/360, was the dominant computing platform, and the company produced 80 percent of computers in the U.S. and 70 percent of computers worldwide. After pioneering the multipurpose microcomputer in the 1980s, IBM began losing its market dominance to emerging competitors.
IBM is one of 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Infosys is headquartered in Bangalore. Infosys is the second-largest Indian IT company, after Tata Consultancy Services.
Logitech was founded in Switzerland in 1981. Products include keyboards, mice, tablet accessories, headphones and headsets, webcams, and Bluetooth speakers. In 2008, Logitech announced that it had manufactured one billion computer mice since 1985.
Oracle Corporation was founded in Redwood City, California and is now headquartered in Austin, Texas. Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle, has served as Oracle's CEO since its founding in 1977. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The Oracle relational database management system (RDBMS) uses the Structured Query Language (SQL).
SAP is a German software company founded in 1972. It is the world's leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendor and the largest non-American software company by revenue.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was founded in 1968 and is part of the Tata Group. TCS is the second largest Indian company by market capitalization.
VMWare develops virtualization software, that creates an abstraction layer over computer hardware that allows the hardware elements of a single computer to be divided into multiple virtual computers, commonly called virtual machines (VMs).
Networks and Mobile Phones
Cellular Networks
A Cellular network or Mobile network is a radio network distributed over land areas called cells, each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver, known as a cell site or base station. In a cellular network, each cell uses a different set of frequencies from neighboring cells, to avoid interference and provide guaranteed bandwidth within each cell.
There are five generations of cellular networking technology –
1G - the first commercial cellular network was launched in Japan by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in 1979. 1G was introduced to the USA in 1983.
2G - launched on the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) in Finland in 1991. It provided significant mobile talk advancements, introducing encrypted calls. While radio signals on 1G networks are analog, radio signals on 2G networks are digital. The first SMS text message was sent from a computer to a mobile phone in 1992 in the UK, while the first person-to-person SMS from phone to phone was sent in Finland in 1993.
3G - launched in 2001, 3G offered better voice quality and faster data transfer, allowing users to surf the internet and stream music on a mobile phone. Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third-generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard.
4G - the first 4G networks were commercially deployed in Norway and Sweden in 2009, and have since been deployed throughout most parts of the world. Starting at a minimum of 12.5 Mbps, 4G provided high-quality video streaming/chat, fast mobile web access, HD videos, and online gaming. 4G has speeds of up to 150 Mbit/s download.
5G - cellular phone companies began deploying worldwide in 2019. 5G has higher bandwidth to deliver faster speeds than 4G and can thus connect more different devices. 5G is capable of delivering significantly faster data rates than 4G, with peak data rates of up to 20 gigabits per second (Gbps).
Wi-Fi Networks
Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity. It is used to create a wireless network of devices to access the internet. It follows IEEE 802.11 standards. Wi-Fi networks use multiple bands of radio waves and microwaves to transmit data among the devices wirelessly. In WiFi networks, Internet service is accessible only where a WiFi connection is present.
The current generation wireless standard is Wi-Fi 6.
Mobile phones
History
The first hand-held cell phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Dr. Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing around 2kg. In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first to be commercially available. From 1983 to 2014, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew from zero to over 7 billion.
It was claimed that Ernie Wise made the first mobile phone call in the UK on 1 January 1985 from St Katharine Docks, East London, to Vodafone's Headquarters in Newbury.
The first SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card was made in 1991 by Munich smart card maker Giesecke & Devrient.
The first Short Message Service (SMS) text message was sent from a computer to a mobile phone in 1992 in the UK while the first person-to-person SMS from phone to phone was sent in Finland in 1993.
Symbian was an operating system used in Nokia phones. It was the most popular smartphone operating system on a worldwide average until the end of 2010, when it was overtaken by Android.
Android is developed by a consortium of developers known as the Open Handset Alliance, though its most widely used version is primarily developed by Google. It was unveiled in 2007, with the first commercial Android device, the HTC Dream, being launched in 2008.
Manufacturers
Apple
The first-generation iPhone was released in June 2007. It incorporated a 3.5-inch multi-touch display and had a starting price of US$499.
The iPhone 3G was released in 2008 and introduced faster 3G connectivity, and a lower starting price of US$199.
The iPhone 4 was marketed as the "world's thinnest smartphone" and introduced the Retina display.
The iPhone 4s was announced in 2011 and introduced the Siri virtual assistant.
The iPhone 5s introduced the Touch ID fingerprint authentication sensor.
The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus are the sixteenth and latest generation of iPhones, and were announced during Apple Event, Apple Park in Cupertino, California, in September 2022. The price of the iPhone 14 starts at $799.
The iPhone runs on the iOS operating system. Major versions of iOS are released annually. The current stable version, iOS 16, was released in September 2022.
The iPhone accounts for around 16% of global smartphone market share.
Blackberry
The line of BlackBerry smartphones was developed and maintained by the Canadian company BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion, or RIM) from 1999 to 2016, after which it was licensed to various companies. The company was founded by Mike Lazaridis.
The phones were known for having a physical QWERTY keyboard.
At its peak in 2011, there were 85 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide, but the rise of Google's Android platform and Apple's iOS caused it to decline in popularity by nearly three-quarters.
BlackBerry phones are now officially defunct and are unable to function.
The Nexus line of Android phones started out in 2010 and reached its end in 2016, replaced by Google Pixel.
The current models in the Pixel line are the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.
Huawei
Huawei was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei and is headquartered in Shenzhen.
Their portfolio of phones includes both high-end smartphones, its Huawei Mate series and Huawei P series, and cheaper handsets that fall under its Honor brand.
Huawei is currently banned from doing business with US companies as the US government considers Huawei to be a national security threat.
Motorola
Motorola MicroTAC is a cellular phone first manufactured as an analog version in 1989. The MicroTAC introduced a new "flip" design, where the "mouthpiece" folded over the keypad. This set the standard and became the model for modern flip phones today. Its predecessor was the much larger Motorola DynaTAC and it was succeeded by the Motorola StarTAC in 1996.
Nokia
Nokia made significant contributions to the mobile telephony industry, assisting in the development of the GSM, 3G, and LTE standards. For a decade beginning in 1998, Nokia was the largest worldwide vendor of mobile phones and smartphones. In the later 2000s, however, Nokia suffered from a series of poor management decisions, and soon saw its share of the mobile phone market drop sharply.
Nokia 5110 is a GSM mobile phone that was introduced in 1998.
Nokia 3210 is a GSM cellular phone, announced by Nokia in 1999.
Nokia introduced its “Connecting People” advertising slogan in 1992.
Oppo
Oppo phones are smartphones produced by the partially state-owned Chinese company Oppo.
The current lineup of phones includes the Find X, N, and Reno series.
Samsung
The Samsung Galaxy was released in 2009. It uses the Android operating system.
The Galaxy S was released in 2010. It is produced in over two dozen variations, and 25 million units were sold by 2013.
Samsung later expanded the Galaxy S line to tablet computers with the announcement of the Galaxy Tab S in 2014.
In 2012, Samsung Electronics became the world's largest mobile phone maker by unit sales, overtaking Nokia. The Galaxy accounts for around 19% of global smartphone market share today.
In 2017, Samsung announced the voice-powered digital assistant named "Bixby". It was introduced alongside the Samsung Galaxy S8.
Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy S23 series, consisting of the Samsung Galaxy S23, Samsung Galaxy S23+ and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, in February 2023.
Sony
The Sony Xperia X1 was the first smartphone to be released by Sony, in 2008.
Sony Mobile was previously known globally as Sony Ericsson before being rebranded in 2012.
The X10 was released in 2010. It was the first in the Xperia line to feature the Android operating system, where previous models ran on the Windows Mobile OS.
In 2017, Sony Mobile held less than 1% global market share.
Xiaomi
Xiaomi released its first smartphone in 2011. Most of the phones run on the MIUI User interface, which is based on the Android operating system.
Xiaomi's flagship mobile handset line is the Xiaomi series (formerly known as Mi series).
List of Android versions
| Version | Internal codename | Release date |
| Android 1.0 | 2008 | |
| Android Cupcake | Cupcake | 2009 |
| Android Donut | Donut | 2009 |
| Android Eclair | Eclair | 2009 |
| Android Froyo | Froyo | 2010 |
| Android Gingerbread | Gingerbread | 2010 |
| Android Honeycomb | Honeycomb | 2011 |
| Android Ice Cream Sandwich | Ice Cream Sandwich | 2011 |
| Android Jelly Bean | Jelly Bean | 2012 |
| Android KitKat | Key Lime Pie | 2013 |
| Android Lollipop | Lemon Meringue Pie | 2014 |
| Android Marshmallow | Macadamia Nut Cookie | 2015 |
| Android Nougat | New York Cheesecake | 2016 |
| Android Oreo | Oatmeal Cookie | 2017 |
| Android Pie | Pistachio Ice Cream | 2018 |
| Android 10 | Quince Tart | 2019 |
| Android 11 | Red Velvet Cake | 2020 |
| Android 12 | Show Cone | 2021 |
| Android 13 | Tiramisu | 2022 |
| Android 14 | Upside Down Cake | Q3 2023 |
| Android 15 | Vanilla Ice Cream | 2024 |
Mobile Network Operators
O2 was formed in 1985 as Cellnet and was later rebranded as BT Cellnet. O2 was bought by Telefonica in 2005 for £18 billion, but retained its name and continued to be based in the United Kingdom.
Orange S. A. was created when Hutchison Whampoa acquired a controlling stake in Microtel Communications Ltd during the early-1990s and rebranded it Orange. It became a subsidiary of Mannesmann in 1999 and was acquired by France Telecom in 2000. The France Telecom company was rebranded to Orange in 2013.
T-Mobile was launched as Mercury One2One (stylised one2one) in 1993. one2one was purchased by Deutsche Telekom in 1999. In 2010, it merged with Orange UK to form a joint venture, Everything Everywhere, which continued to operate the T-Mobile and Orange brands until 2015.
Virgin Mobile is owned by Virgin Media which is part of Virgin Media O2. was launched in 1999 as a private joint venture between One2One (later T-Mobile UK) and the Virgin Group. Virgin Media O2 is the biggest mobile network in the UK with around 24 million mobile customers.
Three UK (officially Hutchison 3G UK Limited) launched as the UK's first commercial video mobile network on 3 March 2003 (03-03-03), the day that 3G services went live across the country. In June 2023 it was announced that Three UK and Vodafone were planning to merge their UK-based operations.
EE is a brand within the BT Group. EE is the largest mobile network operator in the United Kingdom, with 32 million customers as of June 2023. The company was formed as Everything Everywhere in 2010 as a joint venture between Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom (now Orange S.A.). In 2012 it was rebranded to EE concurrently while launching the UK's first 4G mobile network.
Vodafone was originally part of Racal Electronics. The company was formed in 1985 and is headquartered in Newbury, Berkshire. The company owns and operates networks in 21 countries, with partner networks in 48 further countries.
Largest terrestrial mobile phone network operators
| Company | Country | Subscriptions (in millions) |
| China Mobile | China | 974 |
| Bharti Airtel | India | 496 |
| Jio | India | 436 |
| China Telecom | China | 390 |
| China Unicom | China | 320 |
| America Movil | Mexico | 307 |
| MTN Group | South Africa | 289 |
| Telefonica | Spain | 277 |
| Vodafone | United Kingdom | 274 |
| Orange | France | 241 |
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