Module+4

= = =//Information Technology//: our summary=
 * || [[image:elenamartinmonje/Cover_Info_Technol.jpg width="270" height="259"]] ||

//In this module you have to read the book **Information Technology**//

//. We are going to do some collaborative work, creating our own summary of this book.// PLEASE, ADD YOUR NAME AT THE END OF YOUR SUMMARY

====The age of machines and factories was the nineteenth century. The first computer, built in the 1940s and 1950s, was as big as a room. Now computer chips are smaller than a full stop, and they are everywhere.====

====Computers are the last episode of a mathematical saga that started thousands of years ago. Sumerians, Babylonians and afterwards other cultures invented systems to count. The abacus is a good example of it, although this device is not an automatic machine. The first calculating machines were manufactured in the seventeenth century. In 1642 the French mathematician Blaise Pascal made an Arithmetic machine. In the 1670s the German Leibniz improved the machine made by Pascal, using only two digits (0 and 1) to calculate, just like modern computers do.====

Manuel Espejo

 * 3- The first computers**

Something very interesting about computers is that, originally, the word “computer” did not mean the machines they are today. Initially, “computer” meant a person that was in charge of doing the calculations that technicians did not have the time to do. It was not until Charles Babbage’s “Difference Engine” that the word was applied to these machines. However, the Difference Engine machine was finished by other technicians that made it work fifty years later and it is the Science Museum in London. Babbage had stopped working on this machine because he started working on an “Analytical Engine”, which had memory and it is seen as the very first computer. When Babbage was building the Analytical Engine, Ada Lovelace worked with him and wrote a program for his machine as she was the first computer programmer in the world, which is why ADA is the name of a computer programming language. In 1930s the “Z1” was built by Konrad Zuse, followed by “Z3” and “Z4” which were like modern computers in so many ways since they used 0 and 1 to do all the calculations. Idaira Serrano de la Cuesta

4- Alan Turing
Alan Turing was born in 1912 and studied mathematics at Cambridge University. His report about the “Turing Machine” talked about a machine which was able to “read” programmes. During the Second World War (1939-1945), the Germans started to send encoded messages with information and instructions between groups of soldiers. They used a machine called “Enigma” for sending these messages, therefore Turing was hired along with other mathematicians by the British Government to try to read and understand these messages. They built a machine called “Bombe” which was able to perceive these messages and decode them. In 1943, the Germans change to a code called “Fish” because they had been discovered. The Bombe machine was not able to break the new code so another machine was built, the “Colossus”, which was as big as a room and it took two hours to understand the Fish code. Idaira Serrano de la Cuesta

5- The history of the PC
The term PC was first used to specify a computer that only needed one person to work it. It was in 1957, when IBM developed the 620 Auto-Point. These computers were large and expensive, not suitable to have at home. PCs, as we know them now, began to develop in the 1960s when the technicians found a way to make chips of small size with thousands of small transistors on them. Intel 8080 was one of these chips. Apple computer started as a company in 1976 and IBM built its first personal computer in 1981. In the 1980s, the PCs market grew quickly. There were different companies and each of them had its own operating system. The C64 system from Commodore Computers was one of the most successful and some companies such as Atari, Amiga, Amstrad and Acorn began using compatible third-party operating systems and the same software as the IBM computers. Apple is the only company that nowadays uses its own operating system. Intel is one of the other main operating systems. In 1965, More's law predicted that the number of transistors on computer chips will double every eighteen months and this has almost been fulfilled. As chips began to get smaller and smaller, computers could also become smaller and able to work anywhere. Today's small laptops can perform more tasks and much faster than the primitive PCs from the 1970s.

María Antonia Barnés Vigil

6- Bill Gates and Microsoft
**7- Humans against computers**

====The power of machines and the dangers of their use have long interested writers and film producers. But scientists have also been interested in the idea of computers more powerful than humans. ==== ====In 1996, IBM built a chess computer, Deep Blue, to win against the best chess player in the world at the time, Gary Kasparov. The first match was won by Kasparov, but IBM worked on the computer and its software and, a year later, Deep Blue won the match. In a third match, with a new computer, there was a draw. ==== ====Computers can do calculations quickly, follow instructions and play mathematical games. Are they really smart? Have computers become smarter than humans? Do they think like humans do? ==== ====<span style="font-family: Times New Roman,Times,serif;">Scientists do not agree on the answers. Some believe that human brain is like a computer, but others believe that humans calculate in a different way. Alan Turing created a test to check if computers think like humans. In a chat, if you can't recognize if you are talking to a computer or talking to a person, the computer will pass the test and win a prize. So far, no computer has succeeded. ====

8- The Internet
**9- Power to the people** **10- Getting the message** <span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;,serif; font-size: 12pt;">The first telegraph machines were very large and difficult to use. In the 1840s the Morse code was invented for an improved telegraph. The Telex machine was invented in the 1920s. This machine allowed electronic messages to be sent from one Telex machine to another. Sixty years later, computers were in trend and with them e-mail messages. E-mails became popular with the Internet and the Web, as they only use one system and can be sent to anyone in the world. With mobile phone in the late 1990s text messages became another popular way of sending electronic messages. <span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ana Rodríguez

12- Computer games
<span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;,serif; font-size: 12pt;">The two first computer games created were: //Spacewar//, which consisted of two players fighting against each other; and //Adventure//, which created a story of which the player was part of. With these games the two most important kinds of computer games were created. <span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nowadays video games are very powerful. With the improved pictures they make the player think that he is in a real world. The three biggest companies are Sony (who created PlayStation), Nintendo (who created Wii), and Microsoft (who created Xbox). <span style="font-family: &#39;Times New Roman&#39;,serif; font-size: 12pt;">There is an increase worry about computer games, violent computer games are making young people be more violent and computer game players spend many hours playing; which leads to unhealthy life styles.

Ana Rodríguez **13- I love you (and other viruses)**