Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. A drawing of a usual modern desktop computer. A computer is a machine (mostly electronic) that is able to take information (input), do some work on or make changes to the information (process), to make new information (output). Computers have existed for much of humanhistory. Examples of early computers are the astrolabe and the abacus. There are four main processing steps in a computer, and they are: inputting, outputting, storage and processing. Modern computers are very different from early computers. They can do billions of calculations per second. Most people have used a personal computer in their home or at work. Computers do many different jobs where automation is useful. Some examples are controlling traffic lights, vehicle computers, security systems, washing machines and digital televisions. A computer user can control it by a user interface. Input devices include keyboard, mouse, buttons, touch screen. Some very new computers can also be controlled with voice commands or hand gestures or even brain signals through electrodes implanted in the brain or along nerves. Computers can be designed to do almost anything with information. Computers are used to control large and small machines which in the past were controlled by humans. They are also in homes, where they are used for things such as listening to music, reading the news, and writing. Modern computers are electronic machines. A computer is only useful if it has both hardware and software. Hardware is the physical parts the computer is made of - for example keyboard, mouse, screen, tower, and the circuits inside it. Software is the computer programs (mathematical instructions). The software uses the hardware, when the user gives it instructions, and gives useful output. Many modern computers do billions of calculations each second. They do mathematical arithmetic very quickly but computers do not really . They only follow the instructions in their software programs. Computer programs are designed or written by computer programmers. A few programmers write programs in the computer's own language called machine code. Most programs are written using a programming language like C++, Java, and Python. Define computer language. A language in which the operator “talks” to a computer. Programming language n. An artificial language used to write instructions that can be translated into machine language and then executed by a computer. To write code for (a computer program or application). A computer program is usually written by a computer programmer in a programming language. These programming languages are more like the language you talk and write with every day. A program called a compiler translates the user's instructions into binary code (machine code) that the computer will understand and do what is needed. A computer is an electronic machine which helps in solving problems quickly and easily. It solves problems according to instructions given to it by the computer user called programs or software. It is a digital machine(that uses binary digits) used in all fields. Humans have a problem with maths. To show this, try doing 5. It is hard to remember all the steps! People made tools to help them remember where they were in a maths problem. The other problem people have is that they have to do the same problem over and over and over again. A cashier had to make change every day in her head or with a piece of paper. That took a lot of time and made mistakes. So, people made calculators that did those same things over and over. This part of computer history is called the . For example, a music box is a machine that plays the same music over and over again. Some people wanted to be able to tell their machine to do different things.
For example, they wanted to tell the music box to play different music every time. They wanted to be able to program the music box- to order the music box to play different music. This part of computer history is called the . He built a mechanical theater which performed a play lasting 1. These ropes and drums were the language of the machine- they told what the machine did and when. Some people argue that this is the first programmable machine. Others say the first computer was made by Charles Babbage. Definition of programming language. Computer Languages Timeline. The Language List (about 2500 computer languages). Technology Guide: Computer Programming History. Computer program definition at Dictionary.com. The length of day and night could be changed (AKA re- programmed) every day in order to account for the changing lengths of day and night throughout the year. In 1. 62. 3, Wilhelm Schickard made a mechanical calculator. Other Europeans made more calculators after him. They were not modern computers because they could only add, subtract, and multiply- you could not change what they did to make them do something like play Tetris. Because of this, we say they were not programmable. In 1. 80. 1, Joseph Marie Jacquard used punched paper cards to tell his textile loom what kind of pattern to weave. He could use punch cards to tell the loom what to do, and he could change the punch cards, which means he could program the loom to weave the pattern he wanted. This means the loom was programmable. Charles Babbage wanted to make a similar machine that could calculate. And that stands out at the beginning. This is because people get bored easily doing the same thing over and over. Imagine spending your life writing things down on index cards, storing them, and then having to go find them again. Census Bureau in 1. People got bored and frustrated, and would say, . Herman Hollerith figured out how to make a machine that would automatically add up information that the Census bureau collected. The Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (which later became IBM) made his machines, and everyone was happy. At least, they were happy until their machines broke down, got jammed, and had to be repaired. This is when the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation invented tech support. Because of machines like this, new ways of talking to these machines were invented, and new types of machines were invented, and eventually the computer as we know it was born. In the first half of the 2. For example, if they had to launch a rocket ship, they needed to do a lot of math to make sure the rocket worked right. So they put together computers. These computers used analog circuits, which made them very hard to program. Then, in the 1. 93. Scientists figured out how to make and use digital computers in the 1. Scientists made a lot of digital computers, and as they did, they figured out how to ask them the right sorts of questions to get the most out of them. Here are a few of the computers they built: EDSAC was one of the first computers that remembered what you told it even after you turned the power off. This is called (von Neumann) architecture. Konrad Zuse's electromechanical . The Z3 (1. 94. 1) was the first working machine that used binary arithmetic. Binary arithmetic means using . You could also program it. In 1. 99. 8 the Z3 was proved to be Turing complete. Turing complete means that it is possible to tell this particular computer anything that it is mathematically possible to tell a computer. It is the world's first modern computer. The non- programmable Atanasoff. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory ENIAC (1. Konrad Zuse's Z3 of 1. At first, however, the only way to reprogram ENIAC was by rewiring it. Several developers of ENIAC saw its problems. They invented a way to for a computer to remember what they had told it, and a way to change what it remembered. John von Neumann talked about this design in the paper First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, distributed in 1. A number of projects to develop computers based on the stored- program architecture started around this time. The first of these was completed in Great Britain. The first to be demonstrated working was the Manchester Small- Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM or . Shortly afterwards, the machine originally described by von Neumann's paper. It has become the main concept which defines a modern computer. The technologies used to build computers have changed since the 1. Neumann architecture. In the 1. 95. 0s computers were built out of mostly vacuum tubes. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes in the 1. They also need less power and do not break down as much as vacuum tubes. In the 1. 97. 0s, technologies were based on integrated circuits. Microprocessors, such as the Intel 4. By the 1. 98. 0s, microcontrollers became small and cheap enough to replace mechanical controls in things like washing machines. The 1. 98. 0s also saw home computers and personal computers. With the evolution of the Internet, personal computers are becoming as common as the television and the telephone in the household. In 2. 00. 5 Nokia started to call some of its mobile phones (the N- series) . In 2. 00. 8, if smartphones are included in the numbers of computers in the world, the biggest computer maker by units sold, was no longer Hewlett- Packard, but rather Nokia. Most people keep them on top of a desk, which is why they are called . This makes them easy to carry around. Both laptops and desktops are called personal computers, because one person at a time uses them for things like playing music, surfing the web, or playing video games. There are bigger computers that many people at a time can use. You can think of a personal computer like this: the personal computer is like your skin: you can see it, other people can see it, and through your skin you feel wind, water, air, and the rest of the world. A mainframe is more like your internal organs: you never see them, and you barely even think about them, but if they suddenly went missing, you would have some very big problems. An embedded computer, also called embedded system is a computer that does one thing and one thing only, and usually does it very well. For example, an alarm clock is an embedded computer: it tells the time. Unlike your personal computer, you cannot use your clock to play Tetris. Because of this, we say that embedded computers cannot be programmed, because you cannot install more programs on your clock. Some mobile phones, automatic teller machines, microwave ovens, CD players and cars are operated by embedded computers. All- in- one computers are desktop computers that have all of the computer's inner mechanisms in the same case as the monitor. Apple has made several popular examples of all- in- one computers, such as the original Macintosh of the mid- 1. Mac of the late 1.
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