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Computer History
This category includes questions and answers about the history of the computer. Ask questions about the first computer and major developments in computing.
5,564 Questions
The Internet was created as a project in 1958 by the United States Government ARPA (The Advanced Research Projects Agency) to network computers in order to gain a technological, and potentially a military advantage over the Soviets in the middle of the cold war. It was then used to connect several universities together forming the ARPANET so that they could assist in military and or technological research. Later the "internet" was opened to the common user and the name ARPANET was dropped.
The World Wide Web was originated in the UK by Tim Berners Lee (while working at CERN), as a user friendly layer on top of the already existing internet. He developed software for the World Wide Web and it became available from 1991 The World Wide Web is not the same thing as the Internet. The "Web" as it is called is simply a software application that uses the internet infrastructure to send data between devices running that particular application software.
The meaning of the word computer?
The meaning of the word "COMPUTER"
Common
Operating
Machine
Purposely
Used for
Training
Education and
Research
That is the meaning of computer
A computer. ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator.
The ENIAC was the first American digital computer in the modern sense of the word.
The contract for the first ENIAC system was signed on 5th June 1943 and it was constructed by John Mauchley and J. Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering from July, 1943. It was unveiled on February 14, 1946 at Penn, USA.
ENIAC Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first electronic general-purposecomputer. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems wikipedia
Who made the first man made computer?
Which device is considered the first computer is somewhat debatable. Some consider the abacus to be the first computer. The first programmable machine was invented by Al-Jazari, but it didn't perform calculations. (It was a humanoid robot that played music.)
The first general use computer was designed by Charles Babbage, but was never entirely built, and would have been entirely mechanical. (He couldn't get the funding. Whether it would have worked with the technology available at the time is debated.) If it had been built and worked, it would have been the first Turing-complete computer (except that a truly Turing-complete computer would need infinite memory). To be Turing-complete means to be able to simulate any other computer. (It doesn't have to simulate it in real time.) In other words, it can (in theory) be programmed for any (computational) task.
The Z3 was designed by Konrad Zuse. It was the first Turing-complete computer (except for memory limitations), but was mechanical rather than electronic. It's existence was kept secret until after WWII.
The first fully-electronic computer was the Colossus. It was designed primarily by Tommy Flowers, with assistance from others at Bletchley Park. Its was also secret until after the war. (It was used to crack the German Enigma cipher (code) machine.) It was programmable only by rewiring it, and was not Turing-complete.
I think the ENIAC, designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, was the first computer to be both Turing-complete and fully electronic, but I'm not sure. It was considered the first programmable computer until information on the computers secretly made during WWII were made public.
The first computer with a graphical display and mouse was the Alto. It was created by a small team at Xerox, but was never sold. Some consider it to be the first personal computer.
The first computer to use an x86 processor was the IBM PC 5150. It was designed by a team of engineers led by Don Estridge.
Charles Babbage designed what was called the "Analytical Engine" which was the first stored-program mechanical computer in 1837. However his design was never completed.
In 1939, John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry developed the Atanasoff-Berry Computer at Iowa State University, which was regarded as the first electronic digital computer.
The first computer to have the components necessary to be considered a computer was made by Konrad Zuse in 1936, it was called the Z1, with its successors being the Z2, Z3, and Z4 respectively. While many think the first computer was the ENIAC, the ENIAC was only the first electronic computer, with the Z1 being mostly mechanical but with a drive motor to facilitate somewhat autonomous calculation. It was different from being simply a comprehensive calculation machine in that it could operate from a program and execute commands autonomously vs just react to given instructions.
Did computers have a negative impact on society?
Most of us know the pros of having a computer (links us to other parts of the world and provides us with information we use to have to search for at the library, etc.) These are some of the negative things about the computerized world:
- The younger generation would rather communicate through computer (easier) than actually working towards making friends or finding love the good old fashion way. Thus, part of the magic of falling in love is lost. People breakup in emails rather than facing the person and as all generations have been taught before we must take responsibility for our own actions.
- A high percentage of people sit at their computer far too long and some people lose reality as far as social activities and learning social skills. Not to mention packing on the weight and the lack of exercise that will haunt them further on down the road.
- Sitting behind a computer all day is hard on the eyes.
- Being on the computer too much takes away the imagination for most (although for a very few they can be creative in advertising and digital imagery, etc. on websites.)
- Computers can distract a person so much they lose contact with the reality around them such as taking time with family, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives and children.
- It opens up kiddy porn and other immoral things.
- More crime is committed through the Internet.
- More misinformation by SOME people on the Internet can cause problems for the younger generation.
- More person problems by two people on the Internet (never having met) may cause heartbreak or mistrust. It's impossible to know someone well over the Internet.
- Spammers are annoying.
- Hackers can ruin your computer system.
Many people do work on the computer from their home (I am one of those people) but smart people do so much, then get up, get moving and get into shape. They spend time with family and friends and limit their time on the computer.
There is a new generation coming up where information is at one's finger tips too easily and then it becomes a personal thing in some people's lives. Before one knows it all will be like zombies wandering around (out of shape) and wondering why no one is relating to them.
While technology is a wonderful thing it is almost likely that it can be used in an immoral or wrong way. There is a price to pay for everything even if it appears it's making life easier on people.
Which computer was used to design the first H-Bomb?
ENIAC was first used in calculations for the hydrogen bomb
What is another name for personal computers?
It was called PC. Notebooks or Desktops. Some people PC in a bad way though.
it all began with a machine Herman Hollerith began designing in 1881 to tabulate the census in a much modern and faster way than the methods the government had in those days. when the spectations of the 1890 census promised to take very long this deviced saved the day since he achieved ten years of tabulation in one year. Hollerith formed his company to sell the machine and became part of IBM.
Did Alan Turing made the vacuum tubes computers?
No, he had to use mechanical gears, etc. because they were the only device technology available in his time. Electric relays were first developed about 15 years after he designed his computer, while vacuum tubes were first developed about 90 years after he designed his computer.
What was the first computer made of?
Well some parts of the computer is made out of medel and some are plastic and copper. Well some parts of the computer is made out of medel and some are plastic and copper. Well some parts of the computer is made out of medel and some are plastic and copper.
What was the name of the man that invented the first apple computer?
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (known as The Woz) created the first Apple computer in 1976.
How do you do the cubed in the keyboard?
In a good word processing program, there will be a toolbar option for "sub" an "super" script.
Such as: H2O. I used the subscript option in this program on Answers.com Superscript would be the same, like 5 cubed: 53. Ther are other ways of doing it, but that's the most convenient one.
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper.
How many components make up a computer?
You're kidding, right?
Just in case you're not, it depends on the computer. The hundreds of millions of transistors could be called components. The monitor, keyboard, disk drives, motherboard, power supply and peripheral hardware each have many chips containing an overwhelming number of transistors each.
You'd have to research each component used in a specific computer, perform a chip count, and while you're at it count all of the other components. Since each manufacturer has different ideas of what's the RIGHT way to build a computer, each computer will have a different count. But feel free to start the research.
Just one typical 1G byte RAM package has nearly 10,000,000,000 transistors (components) and about 8,000,000,000 memory capacitors (components) on it. A modern Microprocessor, Bridge Chip, Drive controller, etc. has similar numbers of components on it. Most chip manufacturers will not release actual component counts of their products as it is considered proprietary.
Why are the keys on a QWERTY keyboard not arranged in alphabetical order?
The "QWERTY" keyboard (named for the first 6 letters on the top row) was developed to slow down typists on old manual typewriters. With a regular ABCDE.. keyboard setup they would type too fast and cause the keys to jam. With the QWERTY setup they typed slower and prevented key jams. It became the accepted standard and persists even after electric typewriters & computers made the original reason irrelevant.
How large was the first computer ever made?
The first computer ever built weighed 30 tons and was the size of two semis.
What is the difference between a clip art and word art?
Clipart are typically pictures, or other graphics such as fancy lines, or borders.
Word Art is fancy writing that is in another shape, other than the typical left to right. For example, a flyer for a party might have the words "ITS PARTY TIME" going across the top in an arc form, or the words going from bottom left to top right. This is considered Word Art in Microsoft applications.
What were computers like 20 years ago?
Most all computers in the 90s were still big desktops, and not really powerful enough for much of anything (or at least of what we would expect today). Most computers had extremely weak memory; enough to store only a few dozen documents, and also a floppy disk drive that will store 1 MB of information. Apple came out with the first successful "portable" computer, simply called the Macintosh Portable in 1989, which led the way to the current-day laptops. But technology has greatly changed in the past 20-25 years. The year 1990 was actually when the Internet was first started, called the "hypertext" system. But all-in-all, computer technology in 1990 is the year when computers were used more and more by many people, instead of only by businesses. It really was the year when the gateway to computer technology was opened to the public.
How powerful was the first computer?
Calculations. More specifically, addition, from that even computers now days just use addition. For example, when you want to subtract something, it just adds a negative amount. When you want to multiply, it just adds that many times. For division it sees how many times it can "subtract" then shows the remainder as a decimal.
That ENIAC was the first computer ever made?
Yes, ENIAC was the first electronic digital computer (what most people refer to as "computers" today), however different sorts of mechanical computers had been developed before it.
However, ENIAC was NOT the 1st Programmable Electronic Computer! Colossus was a sophisticated programmable electronic computer developed by the Top Secret Code Breaking MK ULTRA at Bletchley Park (England's Secret Military Intelligence Decoding Unit). Colossus was built for the purposes of breaking NAZI radio transmission which had been encoded using the NAZI Lorenz cipher system. Sir Flower's First Colossus was up and running in England during 1941, about 2 years prior to invention of ENIAC. So, COLOSSUS was the world's first computer. * Colossus was the first ELECTRONIC computer. It was developed to crack the LORENZ codes the German high command was using (which was more difficult than Enigma). Until recently ENIAC was thought to be the first, but the secrecy of Colossus was finally lifted and we find it (and 9 others) were first operational in Jan 1944 while various portions of ENIAC were made operational in the period of June 1944 through October 1945.
What computer component are things you can touch?
The partss you can touch are the key board..........disk drive....... and the system........but the hard drive...if you wreck that your computer is done for..... you can touch the inside but i wouldnt. and be careful of the wires.
How did Marcian Hoff's infention change computers?
Marcian Hoff was one of the computer scientists who developed the microprocessor in the early 1970s. Having a 'universal processor' was an important development in computer science.
How many computers are made a day?
Estimates per quarter (of a year) generally sit between 80-100 million units for prebuilt systems. (see source for an example)
If you divide that by 3 to get a single month, that gives you 27-33 million a month.
If you divide that by 30 (an average month) you get between 900,000 and 1.1 million a day.
Source:
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1981717
Advantages of von neumann architecture?
Both program instructions and data are stored as identically coded symbols in the same randomly accessible main memory. The only way the machine knows whether it should decode the symbol obtained from memory as a program instruction or as data is which one it was looking for at the time the symbol was read.
This is in contrast to a Harvard computer, where program instructions and data are stored as totally differently coded symbols in completely separate often incompatibly implemented memories.
Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and because of these even though almost all modern computers act as if they were purely Von Neumann computers, most are typically implemented as some blend of Von Neumann and Harvard features selected to best optimize performance while carefully hiding the Harvard features of the implementation from all programmers and users except the few programmers writing the very lowest levels of system code that must setup and manage those features.
