A computer is compared to a calculator; used to increase the speed and accuracy of numerical computations--the abacus and more modern mechanical calculators (dating back more than 5,000 years ago--using rows of sliding beads or mechanical rods an gears to perform arithmetic operations. However, even during the nineteenth century calculators were very commonly used for calculation, but they were not considered computers.

A computer is defined as a mechanical or electronic device that can efficiently store, retrieve, and manipulate large amounts of information at high speeds and with extreme accuracy. Additionally, computers are built to perform and execute tasks, while accommodating intermediate results without human intervention. This is achieved by the computer utilizing a list of instructions called a program.

History: Computers and Technology


An Englishman, named Charles Babbage, designed and assisted to build an absolute computer during the mid-1800s. This machine--the Analytical Engine--was composed mechanical axles and gears by the hundreds. Ultimately, this design was obtuse in sorting and processing 40-digit numbers.

Also, because of Babbage's engineering venture, an Ada Agusta Byron--the daughter of a Lord Byron of those times--took the reins and exploited this invention. In relation, a primary program was labeled Ada. Moreover, unfortunately for Babbage's work, the project was complete as it was considered detrimentally complex for the technology of those days. Thereafter, computers were put on hold for a while.

Seventy years after Charles Babbage's death, computers became of importance to certain professors and scholars of the early twentieth century. In fact, two masters from Iowa State University--John Atansoff and Clifford Berry--along with Harvard University's Howard Aiken took interest in completing computer projects.

However, their ideal success wasn't very true. Labeled as having intermediate results, the Atansoff-Berry project did actually operate--requiring multiple interventions by the operator while in use. And Aikens's Mark I simply did not perform independently.

VACUUM TUBES AND TRANSISTORS


Vacuum Tubes--ENIAC: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

Furthermore, a few years later, led by the infamous J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly--of the University of Pennsylvania--achieved the developments of fully functional electronic computer (the ENIAC).

The ENIAC became a large attribute regardless of its huge appearance; 80 feet long; 8 feet wide; weighing 33 tons; comprised of 17,000 vacuum tubes that were included in its circuitry--consumed 175,000 watts of electricity, while executing computations of 5,000 additions per second.

Next, the vacuum tube intervention last for a sound decade, as great computer kings--IBM and Remington--adopted the concept; acquiring a mandated climate-controlled environment attained by large businesses, university systems and primary government agencies.

Transistors

The enforceable excitement of the vacuum tube began to dissipate after the impressive details of the transistor came about during the 1950s. Although the run with the vacuum tube was a beneficial hit, because of its reliability and contributions to computer speed, the transistor took their place on the prize rack. Transistors, for the most part, were the changing point in computer technology of the twentieth century: Small and energy-efficient.

Nobel Prize winners--William Shockley, John Bardeen, and alter Brattain--influence the design and development of the transistor that resulted in an ideal that was hosted by Bell Labs in the late 1940s. Ultimately, transistors were commonly packed into compact enclosures that were housed in order to expand the idea and development of successful integrated circuits; which were commonplace in minicomputers, and complied into the much larger mainframe computer.