Monday, March 19, 2007

The computer

A computer is a machine for manipulate data according to a list of commands known as a program. Computers are tremendously adaptable. In fact, they are universal information-processing machines. According to the Church–Turing theory, a computer with a positive minimum entrance capability is in principle capable of performing the responsibilities of any other computer. Therefore, computers with capability ranging from those of a personal digital supporter to a supercomputer may all achieve the same tasks, as long as time and memory capacity are not consideration. Therefore, the same computer design may be modified for tasks ranging from doling out company payrolls to controlling unmanned spaceflights. Due to technical progression, modern electronic computers are exponentially more capable than those of preceding generations. Computers take plentiful physical forms. Early electronic computers were the size of a large room, while whole modern embedded computers may be lesser than a deck of playing cards. Even today, huge computing conveniences still exist for focused scientific computation and for the transaction processing necessities of large organizations. Smaller computers designed for personage use are called personal computers. Along with its convenient equivalent, the laptop computer, the personal computer is the ubiquitous in order processing and communication tool, and is typically what is meant by "a computer". However, the most general form of computer in use today is the embedded computer. Embedded computers are usually comparatively simple and physically small computers used to control one more device. They may control equipment from fighter aircraft to industrial robots to digital cameras. in the beginning, the term "computer" referred to a person who performed numerical calculations, frequently with the aid of a mechanical calculating device or analog computer. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the presented loom designs that used a series of punched paper cards as a program to weave involved patterns. The resulting Jacquard loom is not considered a true computer but it was an essential step in the growth of modern digital computers.

Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a completely programmable computer as early as 1820, In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the presented loom designs that used a series of punched paper cards as a program to weave involved patterns. The resulting Jacquard loom is not considered a true computer but it was an essential step in the growth of modern digital computers.

but due to a combination of the restrictions of the technology of the time, limited finance, and an incapability to resist tinkering with his design, the device was never really constructed in his lifetime. By the end of the 19th century a number of technologies that would later prove helpful in computing had appeared, out such as the punch card and the vacuum tube, and large-scale automated data giving using punch cards was performed by tabulating equipment designed by Hermann Hollerith.During the first half of the 20th century, many technical computing wants were met by increasingly difficult special-purpose analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical model of the problem as a base for subtraction (they became ever more rare after the development of the programmable digital computer). Sequence of gradually more powerful and stretchy computing devices were construct in the 1930s and 1940s.

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