A Brief History of Data by Tim Berglund

The history of data and computing can be divided into major eras: Mainframe (1951-1981), Client-Server (1981-2011), and Events (2011-present)

Charles Babbage pioneered automatic computation in the 1820s, but Ada Lovelace was the first to envision general-purpose computing beyond just calculations

The first major data processing challenge was the 1890 US Census, solved by Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine, which later became IBM

The relational database model by Edgar Codd (1970) revolutionized data storage, though it took years to become the standard over hierarchical and network databases

Client-server architecture emerged with PCs in the 1980s, fundamentally changing how data was stored and accessed from centralized mainframes

The web and internet in the 1990s didn’t immediately transform data architectures, but set the stage for future changes

Data warehousing emerged in the 1990s, creating a divide between operational and analytical data processing

The rise of smartphones and big data in the late 2000s led to NoSQL databases and new ways of handling massive datasets

Event streaming platforms like Kafka (2011) marked the beginning of the “era of events” where data is increasingly treated as continuous streams rather than static stores

Major paradigm shifts in computing/data happen roughly every 30 years and are often not recognized as transformative until years after they begin