Computers in some form are in almost everything these days. From Toasters to Televisions, just about all electronic things has some form of processor in them. This is a very large change from the way it used to be, when a computer that would take up an entire room and weighed tons of pounds has the same amount of power as a scientific calculator. The changes that computers have undergone in the last 40 years have been colossal. So many things have changed from the ENIAC that had very little power, and broke down once every 15 minutes and took another 15 minutes to repair, to our Pentium Pro 200’s, and the powerful Silicon Graphics Workstations, the core of the machine has stayed basically the same. The only thing that has really changed in the processor is the speed that it translates commands from 1’s and 0’s to data that actually means something to a normal computer user.
Just in the last few years, computers have undergone major changes. PC users came from using MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, to Windows 95, a whole new operating system. Computer speeds have taken a huge increase as well, in 1995 when a normal computer was a 486 computer running at 33 MHz, to 1997 where a blazing fast Pentium (AKA 586) running at 200 MHz plus. The next generation of processors is slated to come out this year as well, being the next CPU from Intel, code named Merced, running at 233 MHz, and up. Another major innovation has been the Internet. This is a massive change to not only the computer world, but to the entire world as well. The Internet has many different facets, ranging from newsgroups, where you can choose almost any topic to discuss with a range of many other people, from university professors, to professionals of the field of your choice, to the average person, to IRC, where you can chat in real time to other people around the world, to the World Wide Web, which is a mass of information networked from places around the world.
The Essay on Computer Literacy World Computers Internet
Computer Literacy For over fifty years, beginning with the famous EN IAC, a revolution has been taking place in the United States and the world. The personal computer has changed the way many people think and live. With its amazing versatility, it has found its way into every area of life, and knowing how to operate it is a requirement for today's world. Those who have not taken the time to learn ...
Nowadays, no matter where you look, computers are somewhere, doing something. Changes in computer hardware and software have taken great leaps and jumps since the first video games and word processors. Video games started out with a game called Pong…monochrome (2 colors, typically amber and black, or green and black), you had 2 controller paddles, and the game resembled a slow version of Air Hockey. The first word processors had their roots in MS-DOS, these were not very sophisticated nor much better than a good typewriter at the time. About the only benefits were the editing tools available with the word processors. But, since these first two dinosaurs of software, they have gone through some major changes.
Video games are now placed in fully 3-D environments and word processors now have the abilities to change grammar and check your spelling. Hardware has also undergone some fairly major changes. When computers entered their 4th generation, with the 8088 processor, it was just a base computer, with a massive processor, with little power, running at 3-4 MHz, and there was no sound to speak of, other than blips and bleeps from an internal speaker. Graphics cards were limited to two colors (monochrome), and RAM was limited to 640k and less. By this time, though, computers had already undergone massive changes. The first computers were massive beasts of things that weighed thousands of pounds. The first computer was known as the ENIAC, it was the size of a room, used punched cards as input and didn’t have much more power than a calculator.
The reason for it being so large is that it used vacuum tubes to process data. It also broke down very often…to the tune of once every fifteen minutes, and then it would take 15 minutes to locate the problem and fix it. This beast also used massive amount of power, and people used to joke that the lights would dim in the city of origin whenever the computer was used. The Early Days of Computers The very first computer, in the roughest sense of the term, was the abacus. Consisting of beads strung on wires, the abacus was the very first desktop calculator. The first actual mechanical computer came from an individual named Blaise Pascal, who built an adding machine based on gears and wheels. This invention did not become improved significantly until a person named Charles Babbage came along, who made a machine called the difference engine. It is for this, that Babbage is known as the “Father of the Computer.’ Born in England in 1791, Babbage was a mathematician, and an inventor. He decided a machine could be built to solve polynomial equations more easily and accurately by calculating the differences between them. The model of this was named the Difference Engine.
The Essay on History Of Computers Computer First Machine
Computers are a major part of society. They allow us to communicate, keep organized, calculate bills, and they " re even used to entertain people. There is a long history behind computing that goes back to almost 5, 000 years ago. The evolution of computers is very important to us today because in this day and age we wouldn't be anything without them. (The Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World ...
The model was so well received that he began to build a full scale working version, with money that he received from the British Government as a grant. Babbage soon found that the tightest design specifications could not produce an accurate machine. The smallest imperfection was enough to throw the tons of mechanical rods and gears, and threw the entire machine out of whack. After spending 17,000 pounds, the British Government withdrew financial support. Even though this was a major setback, Babbage was not discouraged. He came up with another machine of wheels and cogs, which he would call the analytical engine, which he hoped would carry out many different kinds of calculations. This was also never built, at least by Babbage (although a model was put together by his son, later), but the main thing about this was it manifested five key concepts of modern computers — .
Input device . Processor or Number calculator . Storage unit to hold number waiting to be processed . Control unit to direct the task waiting to be performed and the sequence of calculations . Output device Parts of Babbage’s inventions were similar to an invention built by Joseph Jacquard. Jacquard, noting the repeating task of weavers working on looms, came up with a stiff card with a series of holes in it, to block certain threads from entering the loom and blocked others from completing the weave.
The Term Paper on Adding Machine Computer Computers Today
Computer Then and Now and Where they are Going In modern times, the computer has been one of the most influential, if not the most influential pieces of electronics ever produced. The evolution of the modern computer has come a long way from the times it was first thought of and conceived, and with the advancements of today's modern computers the opportunities seem to be endless. In the computer ...
Babbage saw that the punched card system could be used to control the calculations of the analytical engine, and brought it into his machine. Ada Lovelace was known as the first computer programmer. Daughter of an English poet (Lord Byron), went to work with Babbage and helped develop instructions for doing calculations on the analytical engine. Lovelace’s contributions were very great, her interest gave Babbage encouragement; she was able to see that his approach was workable and also published a series of notes that led others to complete what he prognosticated. Since 1970, the US Congress required that a census of the population be taken every ten years. For the census for 1880, counting the census took 7 1/2 years because all counting had to be done by hand.
Also, there was considerable apprehension in official society as to whether the counting of the next census could be completed before the next century. A competition was held to find some way to speed the counting process. In the final test, involving a count of the population of St. Louis, Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine completed the count in only 5 1/2 hours. As a result of his systems adoption, an unofficial count of the 1890 population was announced only six weeks after the census was taken. Like the cards that Jacquard used for the loom, Hollerith’s punched cards also used stiff paper with holes punched at certain points.
In his tabulating machine, roods passed through the holes to complete a circuit, which caused a counter to advance one unit. This capability pointed up the principal difference between the analytical engine and the tabulating machine; Hollerith was able to use electrical power rather than mechanical power to drive the device. Hollerith, who had been a statistician with the Census Bureau, realized that the punched card processing had high potential for sales. In 1896, he started the Tabulating Machine Company, which was very successful in selling machines to railroads and other clients. In 124, this company merged with two other companies to form the International Business Machines Corporation, still well known today as IBM. IBM, Aiken & Watson For over 30 years, from 1924 to 1956, Thomas Watson, Sr., ruled IBM with an iron grip.
The Essay on Movies Computers First Computer Ibm
THE HISTORY OF COMPUTERS In 500 B. C. the abacus was first used by the Babylonians as an aid to simple arithmetic. In 1623 Wilhelm Schick ard (1592 - 1635) invented a 'Calculating Clock'. This mechanical machine could add and subtract up to 6 digit numbers, and warned of an overflow by ringing a bell. J. H. Mueller comes up with the idea of the 'difference engine', in 1786. This calculator could ...
Before becoming the head of IBM, Watson had worked for the Tabulating Machine Company. While there, he had a running battle with Hollerith, whose business talent did not match his technical abilities. Under the lead of Watson, IBM became a force to be reckoned with in the business machine market, first as a purveyor of calculators, then as a developer of computers. IBM’s entry into computers was started by a young person named Howard Aiken. In 1936, after reading Babbage’s and Lovelace’s notes, Aiken thought that a modern analytical engine could be built. The important difference was that this new development of the analytical engine would be electromechanical. Because IBM was such a power in the market, with lots of money and resources, Aiken worked out a proposal and approached Thomas Watson.
Watson approved the deal and give him 1 million dollars in which to make this new machine, which would later be called the Harvard Mark I, which began the modern era of computers. Nothing close to the Mark I had ever been built previously. It was 55 feet long and 8 feet high, and when it processed information, it made a clicking sound, equivalent to (according to one person) a room full of individuals knitting with metal needles. Released in 1944, the sight of the Mark I was marked by the presence of many uniformed Navy officers. It was now W.W.II and Aiken had become a naval lieutenant, released to Harvard to help build the computer that was supposed to solve the Navy’s obstacles. During the war, German scientists made impressive advances in computer design.
In 1940 they even made a formal development proposal to Hitler, who rejected farther work on the scheme, thinking the war was already won. In Britain however, scientists succeeded in making a computer called Colossus, which helped in cracking supposedly unbreakable German radio codes. The Nazis unsuspectingly continued to use these codes throughout the war. As great as this accomplishment is, imagine the possibilities if the reverse had come true, and the Nazis had the computer technology and the British did not. In the same time frame, American military officers approached Dr. Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania and asked him to develop a machine that would quickly calculate the trajectories for artillery and missiles.
The Essay on How Computer Viruses Work
How computer viruses work Computer viruses are not understood very well, but they get your attention. Viruses show us how vulnerable we are, but they also show how open and worldly human beings have become. Microsoft and other large companies had to shut down all their e-mail systems when the "Melissa" virus became a worldwide event. A computer virus is passed on from one computer to another ...
Mauchly and his student, Presper Eckert, relied on the work of Dr. John Atanasoff, a professor of physics at Iowa State University. During the late ’30’s, Atanasoff had spent time trying to build an electronic calculating device to help his students solve complicated math problems. One night, the idea came to him for linking the computer memory and the associated logic. Later, he and an associate, Clifford Berry, succeeded in building the “ABC,’ for Atanasoff-Berry Computer. After Mauch ….