Final Final
- Submitted by: yvesmensah
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- Category: History
- Date Submitted: 04/16/2013 11:39 PM
- Pages: 5
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History of the Computer |
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BIT 123 |
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History of the Computer |
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BIT 123 |
Minot state university
March 4, 2012
Authored by: Yves Mensah
Minot state university
March 4, 2012
Authored by: Yves Mensah
Introduction
Computers are electronic devices used for inputting, processing and storing information for future retrieval and use, as explained by techterms.com. Computers have become so embedded in modern day life that they are pretty much used in every industry one can think of, from industry and commerce, to education and research, sports and entertainment to medicine and beyond. Their applications vary from a personal to public use in each of these industries. Common uses range from preparing reports, be it in school or business, analysis to communicating on social networks. But how many a time when we update our Facebook statuses, say from a Dell laptop, or submit a report onto a learning management system using a Hewlett-Packard desktop, have we taken time to think of how these machines came to be? These machines we have become so attached we feel we cannot live without anymore? Never or not often I guess, and as such this will be the focus of this document.
Pre-History
As extracted from pbs.org’s nerds’ timeline, computers have come a long way. Way back most of us can even imagine. The basic idea computing started off with the idea of working out or solving numeric problems. Math problems have been around since about 3,000 B.C. when the abacus (the computer’s earliest known ancestor) was developed in Babylonia (now Iraq). The abacus was a simple counting aid tool useful then, for livestock or money management. Together with the Arabic number system which was developed at about the same time, it introduced notions of the zero and fixed decimal places for units, tens, hundreds, thousands and so on. This made mathematical computations very easy.
Further on the computer’s timeline, notable advancements were...
History of the Computer |
|
BIT 123 |
|
History of the Computer |
|
BIT 123 |
Minot state university
March 4, 2012
Authored by: Yves Mensah
Minot state university
March 4, 2012
Authored by: Yves Mensah
Introduction
Computers are electronic devices used for inputting, processing and storing information for future retrieval and use, as explained by techterms.com. Computers have become so embedded in modern day life that they are pretty much used in every industry one can think of, from industry and commerce, to education and research, sports and entertainment to medicine and beyond. Their applications vary from a personal to public use in each of these industries. Common uses range from preparing reports, be it in school or business, analysis to communicating on social networks. But how many a time when we update our Facebook statuses, say from a Dell laptop, or submit a report onto a learning management system using a Hewlett-Packard desktop, have we taken time to think of how these machines came to be? These machines we have become so attached we feel we cannot live without anymore? Never or not often I guess, and as such this will be the focus of this document.
Pre-History
As extracted from pbs.org’s nerds’ timeline, computers have come a long way. Way back most of us can even imagine. The basic idea computing started off with the idea of working out or solving numeric problems. Math problems have been around since about 3,000 B.C. when the abacus (the computer’s earliest known ancestor) was developed in Babylonia (now Iraq). The abacus was a simple counting aid tool useful then, for livestock or money management. Together with the Arabic number system which was developed at about the same time, it introduced notions of the zero and fixed decimal places for units, tens, hundreds, thousands and so on. This made mathematical computations very easy.
Further on the computer’s timeline, notable advancements were...