Essay on Computer History

Submitted By blahblahhjhsdvhuqwbg
Words: 491
Pages: 2

!!!The History of Computers !!!

THE FIRST EVER
COMPUTER

The first computer ever was made in 1945. They were not like we have them today. They were a sort of typewriters. The first computers were people! That is, electronic computers (and the earlier mechanical computers) were given this name because they performed the work that had previously been assigned to people.
"Computer" was originally a job title: it was used to describe those human beings (predominantly women) whose job it was to perform the repetitive calculations required to compute such things as navigational tables, tide charts, and planetary positions for astronomical almanacs. Imagine you had a job where hour after hour, day after day, you were to do nothing but compute multiplications. Boredom would quickly set in, leading to carelessness, leading to mistakes.
And even on your best days you wouldn't be producing answers very fast. Therefore, inventors have been searching for hundreds of years for a way to mechanize (that is, find a mechanism that can perform) this task.
"The Father of Computers" Charles Babbage who invented the 1st mechanical Computer.. in 1834 he dreamt of designing mechanical calculating machines.

!!!Modern Computers!!!

Alan Turing 19121954

As anyone who can operate a personal computer knows, the way to make the machine perform some desired task is to open the appropriate program stored in the computer's memory. Life was not always so simple. The earliest large-scale electronic digital computers, the British Colossus (1944) and the American ENIAC (1945), did not store programs in memory. To set up these computers for a fresh task, it was necessary to modify some of the machine's wiring, re-routing cables by hand and setting switches. The basic principle of the modern computer—the idea of controlling the machine's operations by means of a program of coded instructions stored in the computer's memory—was conceived by