Computer
Computer is something which dates back in history about seven decades. Basically computer was developed to do arithmetic calculations. Which even don't match up to today's cheap digital calculators and were very costly and required a large amount of space( even a full room).
Definition of Computer
Computer is an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.
Evolution of Computer
The first use of the word "computer" was recorded in 1613, referring to a person who carried out calculations, or computations, and the word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations.
The basic idea of computer came from Joseph Marie Jacquard who actually designed it for an improvement to the textile loom by introducing a series of punched paper cards as a template which allowed his loom to weave intricate patterns automatically in 1801. It was the fusion of automatic calculation with programmability that produced the first recognizable computers which inspired Charles Babbage to conceptualize and design the first fully programmable mechanical computer, his analytical engine which he developed in 1837. You can say easily Charles Babbage a the inventor of Computer. But only his son Henry Babbage completed a simplified version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888 and gave a successful demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906 due to Charles limited finances.
ENIAC( Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer)
Later on many occasional developments came into computers which were the reason for the development of ENIAC. ENIAC's design and construction was financed by the United States Army during World War II. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. ENIAC was a modular computer, composed of individual panels to perform different functions. Twenty of these modules were accumulators, which could not only add and subtract but hold a ten-digit decimal number in memory. Numbers were passed between these units across a number of general-purpose buses, or trays, as they were called. In order to achieve its high speed, the panels had to send and receive numbers, compute, save the answer, and trigger the next operation—all without any moving parts.
Facts about ENIAC
The completed machine was announced to the public the evening of February 14, 1946 and formally dedicated the next day at the University of Pennsylvania, having cost almost $500,000 (approximately $6,000,000 today) which actually even don't do the job of a digital calculator.
ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed more than 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8 by 3 by 100 feet (2.4 m × 0.9 m × 30 m), took up 1800 square feet (167 m2), and consumed 150 kW of power.
Generations of Computer
First Generation: The first generation of computers were completely Mechanical or Electromechanical like which u see in your analog watch. Antikythera mechanism, Z3 and Jacquard loom are some of the first generation computers.
Second Generation: The second generation computers were discovered with vacuum tubes in which category the likes of ENIAC , EDSAC ( Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator),
EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), IBM 650, IBM 702 falls into.
Third Generation: It was the most important era of computers which used Integrated circuits which are actually large number of tiny transistors placed ion a small chip. Which made the development from small scale, medium scale and Large scale integrated circuits shortly SSI, MSI and LSI. They were called as Main frame and Mini Computers which were mainly developed by IBM.
Fourth Generation: The fourth generation is what now we are using which use the technology of VLSI ( Very large scale integrated circuits) and Embedded systems. All our present day computers fall under this category. Your computer most probably will be a 32-bit or 64-bit micro computer. Which means it has the ability to process 32 digit binary numbers which are only 0's and 1's.
Hardware and Software
Computer hardware refers to the physical parts or components of computer such as monitor, keyboard, hard disk, mouse, etc. Refers to objects that you can actually touch, like disks, disk drives, display screens, keyboards, printers, boards, and chips.
Personal computer hardware are the component devices that are the building blocks of personal computers. These are typically installed into a computer case, or attached to it by a cable or through a port. In the latter case, they are also referred to as peripherals.
Hardware of a modern personal computer
1. Monitor
2. Motherboard
3. CPU
4. RAM
5. Expansion cards
6. Power supply
7. Optical disc drive
8. Hard disk drive
9. Keyboard
10. Mouse
2. Motherboard
3. CPU
4. RAM
5. Expansion cards
6. Power supply
7. Optical disc drive
8. Hard disk drive
9. Keyboard
10. Mouse
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