# The History and Transition to the Digital Age
The journey toward the digital world did not happen overnight. Instead, it was a long process that spanned more than a century. In the beginning, communication and information processing were entirely physical and analog: letters were handwritten, news was distributed through newspapers, sound was recorded on grooved discs, and calculations were performed using spinning tools.
An early milestone can be seen in the mid-twentieth century: in the 1940s, the first computers appeared, built with switches and wires. They were still extremely large and limited in function.
In 1948, the transistor was invented—a device that regulates the flow of electrical current—which later made it possible for devices to become smaller, more energy-efficient, and more reliable.
The 1960s and 1970s saw the emergence of integrated circuits and microprocessors, which combined thousands or even millions of transistors on a single small chip. This was followed by the emergence of personal computers, which gradually became known to the general public.
The biggest step came in the 1990s, when the internet was opened to the public. Previously, it had only been a network connecting research institutions and the military. This made it possible for digitally stored information to be sent anywhere in a matter of seconds.
As the twenty-first century began, the transition accelerated: phones became smartphones, television shifted from analog waves to digital channels, paper documents gave way to electronic files, and cash gradually began to be replaced by cashless payments.
This change is called the digital transition—the process of transforming the way people work, communicate, learn, and connect with one another.
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