A computer is a programmable device for processing, storing, and displaying information. Learn more in this article about modern digital electronic computers and their design, constituent parts, and applications as well as about the history of computing.
A computer is a machine that can store and process information. Most computers rely on a binary system, which uses two variables, 0 and 1, to complete tasks such as storing data, calculating algorithms, and displaying information.
It is not too great a stretch to say that, in the Jacquard loom, programming was invented before the computer. The close relationship between the device and the program became apparent some 20 years later, with Charles Babbage’s invention of the first computer.
Computer - Technology, Invention, History: By the second decade of the 19th century, a number of ideas necessary for the invention of the computer were in the air.
Computer, device for processing, storing, and displaying information. Computer once meant a person who did computations, but now the term almost universally refers to automated electronic machinery.
Computer science is the study of computers and computing, including their theoretical and algorithmic foundations, hardware and software, and their uses for processing information.
Computer software is divided into two basic types—the operating system and application software. The operating system controls how the different parts of hardware work together. Application software gives the computer instructions for doing specific tasks, such as word processing or playing games.
What it took to turn a network of computers into something more was the idea of the hyperlink: computer code inside a document that would cause related documents to be fetched and displayed.
It was built by Fernando Corbato and Robert Jano at MIT, and it connected an IBM 709 computer with three users typing away at IBM Flexowriters. This was only a prototype for a more elaborate time-sharing system that Corbato was working on, called Compatible Time-Sharing System, or CTSS.
