HISTORY OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS A review of the history of information systems includes a look back at the hardware and how it has been applied. In the half century since the first general-purpose digital computer was installed in a business organization, the hardware has experienced many-fold increases in speed and capacity along with dramatic reductions in size. Concurrently, the computer applications have evolved from relatively straightforward accounting processes to systems designed to support managers and other problem solvers. THE EVOLUTION IN COMPUTER HARDWARE Electronic computers as we know them today can be traced to a machine called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC), which was developed in 1946 by John W.Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. At the time, they were working as engineers at the University of Pennsylvania. ENIAC was the predecessor of the Remington Rand UNIVAC I, which was the first widely marketed universal automatic computer. The first UNIVAC I was installed in a government organization, the U.S. Census Bureau,in 1951. Three years later, the same type of machine was installed in the first business organization, General Electric. Figure 1.1 is a photograph of a UNIVAC. These machines performed fewer than 2,000 calculations per second——-extremely slow compared to the 2 billion or more instructions per second that are common for todays smallest and least expensive microcomputers. These early computers focused on a single task requested by a single user, and were called mainframes. The term mainframe is still in use today, but now is used to describe the large, centrally located computers typically found in large organizations. Although IBM was not the first computer manufacturer, it was not long before it became the industry leader. By the end of the 1950s, it had amassed a full product line and in the mid1960s it revolutionized the computer industry by introducing the IBM System/360 line of computers. These computers were the first that could concurrently perform multiple tasks from multiple users. Although a computer processor actually performs only one task at a time,the term multitasking refers to the fact that more than one user appears to be working on the computer at the same time. This appearance is made possible by the fact that the computer processes pieces of each users application, and some of the pieces may be interspersed with one or more other applications. Before the System/360, one user started, processed, and completed an entire application before another user could access any of the computer resources.Systems such as the System/360 were very expensive by todays standards and could only be afforded by large organizations. Smaller Computers During these early years, in most finns the computer departments monopolized computer use. Users were not allowed to access the computers, which were housed in the central computing facility. The users had to communicate their information needs to information specialists——employees who have a full-time responsibility for developing and operating information systems. Examples of information specialists are systems analysts, programmers, database administrators, network specialists, and webmasters. As the computer became more popular, it became more difficult for the information specialists to keep up with demand, and backlogs of jobs awaiting computer processing became commonplace. Users became impatient and began wanting access to computer-based data without having to go through the information specialists. Some computer manufacturers recognized this need to make computer resources available to users and responded by manufacturing and marketing computers considerably smaller and less expensive than the mainframes. The first small-scale systems were called minicomputers. A minicomputer, or mini,was a smaller and less powerful computer than the larger mainframe, with an ability to handle the processing of small organizations at a more affordable cost. The mini enjoyed immediate success, especially for scientific rather than business applications. Business firms were hesitant to use them to process their data, and a main reason for this was the fact that IBM had not entered the minicomputer market. During this time, an even smaller computer was being developed and marketed. It was called the microcomputer, or micro, because it was even smaller than the mini. Whereas the mini had been intended for small organizations, the micro was seen as a computer that could be owned and operated by an individual. Apple pioneered this market, as did the Tandy Corporation.Nonetheless, the fact that IBM had not brought out a micro dampened sales. Things changed in 1982, when IBM introduced its microcomputer, called the Personal Computer, or PC.
