Evolucion De Las TI

ELECTRONIC ACCOUNTING MACHINE ERA: 1930–1950

The first era of business computing used specialized machines that could sort computer

cards into bins, accumulate totals, and print reports (DaCruz, 2004). Although the electronic

accounting machine was an efficient processor of accounting tasks, the machines

were large and cumbersome. Software programs were hardwired into circuit boards, and

they could be changed by altering the wired connections on a patch board. There were

no programmers, and a human machine operator was the operating system, controlling

all system resources.

GENERAL-PURPOSE MAINFRAME AND MINICOMPUTER

ERA: 1959 TO PRESENT

The first commercial all-electronic vacuum tube computers appeared in the early 1950s

with the introduction of the UNIVAC computers and the IBM 700 Series. Not until 1959

with the introduction of the IBM 1401 and 7090 transistorized machines did widespread

commercial use of mainframe computers begin in earnest. In 1965, the general-purpose

commercial mainframe computer truly came into its own with the introduction of the

IBM 360 series. The 360 was the first commercial computer with a powerful operating

system that could provide time sharing, multitasking, and virtual memory in more

advanced models.

Mainframe computers eventually became powerful enough to support thousands of

online remote terminals connected to a centralized mainframe using proprietary communication

protocols and proprietary data lines. The first airline reservation systems

appeared in 1959 and became the prototypical online, real-time interactive computing

system that could scale to the size of an entire nation.

IBM dominated mainframe computing from 1965 onward and still dominates this $27

billion global market in 2004. Today IBM mainframe systems can work with a wide variety

of different manufacturers’ computers and multiple operating systems on client/ server

networks and networks based on Internet technology standards.

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