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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)