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.
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 - History, Technology, Innovation: A computer might be described with deceptive simplicity as “an apparatus that performs routine calculations automatically.”
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.
Computer - Memory, Storage, Processing: The earliest forms of computer main memory were mercury delay lines, which were tubes of mercury that stored data as ultrasonic waves, and cathode-ray tubes, which stored data as charges on the tubes’ screens.
In 1994 Leonard Adleman, a mathematician at the University of Southern California, demonstrated the first DNA computer by solving a simple example of what is known as the traveling salesman problem.
The company did not enter the growing market for personal computers until 1981, when it introduced the IBM Personal Computer. This product achieved a major share of the market, but IBM was nevertheless unable to exercise its accustomed dominance as a maker of personal computers.
