History of Computers

Throughout time, humans have invented ingenious calculating machines. One of the earliest was the abacus. It's about 5,000 years old. Mechanical calculators that could add and multiply (but not subtract!) were invented in the 1600s. In 1820, Charles Xavier Thomas de Colman invented the arithometer, a machine that could add, subtract, multiply and divide. It was Charles Babbage though, in the early 1800s, who designed mechanical calculating machines (see photo) that were the true ancestor of today's computers. Ada Byron King (Countess of Lovelace) was his programmer and today is considered the mother of computer programming.


Babbage's design for his ultimate calculator, the Analytical Engine, was never produced. It did anticipate the four components essential to modern computing. These components are input, storage, processing and output.

The problem with Babbage's and other mechanical calculators was just that—they were mechanical. The moving parts they relied on were slow and subject to breakdown.

What made modern computers possible was the invention of something that could do calculations and other information processing with no moving parts and do it very fast. That something was electronic components. With electronic components, a fast and efficient machine such as Babbage proposed could be built with all four components essential to modern computing.

Terms:

Input

The data that is entered into a computer. The act of entering data into a computer.

Storage

In computing, any device in which (or on which) information is stored.

Processing

The manipulation of data by a microprocessor or embedded processor according to instructions given to it by a program or embedded in the chip itself.

Output

The computer generated information that is displayed to the user in some discernible form such as a screen display, printed page, or sound.

Electronic

Adjective for describing a device or result that is dependent on the action of electrons to work.