BIG^(TM) : The Basic Internet Guide
A Sourcebook for Learning Web Essentials
in the School, the Home and the Office
by Andis Kaulins, J.D. Stanford University
Lecturer a.D. University of Trier, Author Langenscheidt Fachverlag
(in collaboration with Chris Loehr, Erlangen)
Copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004 by Andis Kaulins. All rights reserved.

PART 1
Essential Internet Knowledge

Chapter 1
The Origins of the Digital Revolution

Page 1 - Essential Internet Knowledge - Beginnings

The digital world and the digital revolution are very recent developments. This has enormous practical consequences since we have not had much time to adapt institutions to the new technology. To understand the internet TODAY, we must know how it began, not too long ago.

The Beginnings of Computer HARDWARE (see hardware)

The modern computer age started in about 1946 when "J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly began to build the first automatic electronic digital computer at the University of Pennsylvania,"³ a gigantic prototype of what we today call "hardware". Hardware is the machinery which does the electronic work of transferring data (bits and bytes)* from one place to another.

The Beginnings of Computer SOFTWARE (see software)

At about the same time as Eckert and Mauchly were working on computer hardware, John von Neumann of Princeton University, perhaps the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, developed the unique and farsighted principle of programming a computer internally, rather than externally. This ultimately led to the development of what we today call "software". These are the programs (source codes) written for machines in bits and bytes, which pass commands to the hardware.
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*A BIT is the abbreviation for "binary digit". A bit is the smallest piece of digital information, consisting of either a 0 or 1, which one might compare to a light bulb being off (= 0) or on (= 1). Eight Bits make up a Byte, so that a Byte has 256 possible combinations of 0's and 1's. A "character" is formed using bits and bytes. A small "a" typed on a keyboard is binary 01001101 whereas a capital "A" typed on a keyboard is binary 01000001. See Binary Information.

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