History
The first uses of computing machines were implementations of simple databases. Herman Hollerith conceived the idea that census data could be represented by holes punched in paper cards and tabulated by machine. He sold his concept to the US Census Bureau; thus, the Census of 1890 was the first ever computerized database—consisting, in essence, of thousands of boxes full of punched cards.
Hollerith's enterprise grew into computer giant IBM, which dominated the data processing market for most of the 20th century. IBM's fixed-length field, 80-column punch cards became the ubiquitous means of inputting electronic data until the 1970s.
In the 1980s, configurable flat-file database computer applications were popular on DOS and the Macintosh. These programs were designed to make it easy for individuals to design and use their own databases, and were almost on par with word processors and spreadsheets in popularity. Examples of flat-file database products were early versions of FileMaker and the shareware PC-File. Some of these, like dBase II, offered limited relational capabilities, allowing some data to be shared between files.
Read more about this topic: Flat File Database
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)