Computers

Far before the invention of modern computers, abacus has been widely used especially by the Chinese people for the calculation purposes. The very first abacus was invented around 500 B.C.(UCMAS, 2007). However the modern abacus that we know today was the one been used in China started around 1300 A.D.(UCMAS, 2007).

According to dictionary.com, a computer is a programmable device that reads data, performs calculations, and outputs the results of the data.

A computer is an electronic device that manipulates information or data. It is used in many different works, it has the ability to store, retrieve and process data. It is used for typing documents, sending emails, playing games and browsing the Web. (GCF, 2014) The computer makes the life of human easier; it makes our work hastily be done.

In 1936 Alan Turing, an English mathematical and a logician created the “Turing machine” (Copeland, 2000) which was originally created for the purpose a mathematical tool, it represented a computing device that contained a read/write head or a scanner with a paper tape passing through it. This machine could

The earliest conception of a computer could be credited to Pascal. Blaise Pascal had invented

A computers are machines that use a binary system to store, memorize, and manipulate information, just quite like the brain. A computer is able to carry out a series of logical operations, but yet so is our brain. The computer has memory that stores data and central processing unit that carries out certain steps, but yet so does the human brain. From the first computer just being used vacuum tubes, to use the silicon chips, there has been a technological revolution. Each year for the last ten years, technology has been becoming smaller and more capable of faster processing. Technology makes it possible for the use of countless labor-saving machines. This

The very first known “calculator” was the abacus, which was first developed in China. Many years later in 1642, a French mathematician named Blaise Pascal invented the world’s first adding machine, which was driven by gears that were capable of doing basic addition and subtraction. Pascal was the first true “inventor” of the calculator, but the patent on the calculator was granted to Burroughs. In 1886, Burroughs invented his first commercial adding machine called the P100 Burroughs Adding Machine that almost resembled a typewriter. His invention was used as inspiration for Otto Steiger, who invented the “Millionaire”, which was essentially just Burroughs’ adding machine but capable of doing multiplication. However, the reason why Burroughs received the patent was because he developed an oil-filled dashpot, which was hydraulic, for the calculator. This dashpot ensured that the machine worked properly no matter what and that he could still get the right answer, no matter the order the numbers were entered in. Unlike this newer and more developed machine, Burroughs older adding machine was unreliable because depending on which way you pulled its lever, you could get varying answers. In fact, his very first adding machine weighed about 63 pounds! As time progressed, several inventors took Burroughs’ model and made it more and more portable. Now, the modern day calculators run on battery and electricity, and some

A computer is an electronic device which manipulates or transforms data. It accepts data, stores data, process data according to a set of instructions, and also retrieve the data when required. Hence it is known as a data processor.

The idea of computers, the way we think of them today, began with the Colossus in 1943. This British system was used in code-breaking during the duration of the war.

Within the last thirty years, the pioneering British computer scientist and Cambridge academic Alan Mathison Turing (1912-1954) has undergone an astonishing reappraisal. His major work on breaking Enigma Codes, his key 1936 paper On Computable Numbers (describing a theoretical machine that could solve any mathematical problem given enough time), and his early digital machines such as the programmable Pilot ACE (most notably his work at the University of Manchester between 1947 and 1954) was unquestionably used and appreciated while he still lived.1

Turing was best be known for his work at Bletchley Park during World War II, and his great part in breaking the German Enigma code. In 1936, while studying for his Ph.D. at Princeton University, Alan Turing published a paper called, “On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem,” which became the foundation of computer science. Alan Turing had invented the computer. As a young man, his idea of a 'Universal Machine', a hypothetical type of computer, resolved one of the most important problems in 20th century mathematics. He used his skills to build the computer and build the computer age. We could see Alan Turing’s work today at school, a library, or any place that has a computer because he invented the

Turing solved it, but in the process established a system that is still useable today.

What is a computer? There are thousands of different types of computers that are built for an extremely vast range of purposes, but overall, what do you class as a computer? Anything with a CPU?

After Babbage’s calculator, the revolution of computers took off leading to the first programmable computer, the digital computer, the minicomputer, the desktop computer, the microprocessor, the portable

　　The key period of the evolution of modern electronic computer is in between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. Not all of them were invented by the mathematician or physician. Among those machines were pioneering computers put together by english academics notably Manchester/Ferrenti Mark 1, built at Manchester University by Frederic Williams and Thomas Kilburn. And the EDSAC, Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator built by Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge University.