Computer In Our Lives Essay, Research Paper

In the 1950’s, computers were a new race of machines and most common person did not know anything about them. Today, computers and new Innovation like the internet has changed the business world and even our daily lives. Large businesses now mostly depend on computers to stay competitive, they not only save time and effort, but sometimes they are used to do very complexe application that are necessary to this business. More and more companies have there own “Web Page” on the net. Some use the Internet only to display information about there business, others really go “all out” and use the Internet as another way for a client to purshase their goods and services. Either way, the Internet is getting larger and larger, therefore, businesses that want to stay on top cannot omit the Internet as another way to transact with their clients.

Although computers have become necessary in the business world, it also has become a “must” for certain individuals in their daily lives. With computers today, the things you can do are unlimited. Desktop computers, meaning computers designed mostly for home use, are getting more powerful than ever and its only a beginning. Like in the business world, the Internet is rising and getting more and more popular, therefore, all sorts of “virtual companies” have come out on the Net and once again, it is only a beginning. Although computers started out by being simple calculators and later on complicated Main-Frames that used punch cards for input devices, today’s computers are much more powerful, and they seem a lot more easy to use and to understand.

The first computer invented began during World War II when a team of scientists and engineers at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, invented a general-purpose electronic digital calculator know as ENIAC, or Electronic Numerator, Integrator, Analyzer, and Computer. Consisting of eighteen thousand vacuum tubes, occupying most of a large room, and adding five thousand ten-digit decimal numbers a second, ENIAC was a revolutionary development, light years ahead of any other calculators. However, ENIAC was not a computer in the strict meaning of the term. It could not store a program, in other words, it could not store a list of list of instructions that tells a computer what to do. Although ENIAC wasn’t defind as a computer, but it quickly led to the invention of one, and today’s computers are its direct descendants.

After the invention of ENIAC in 1944, another contract was issued for the design of the Electronic Discrete Variable Computer, or EDVAC, a computer that would be used to store programs in it. It may seem simple now, but at the time, it was merely impossible to think that you could store commands in a machine, for the longer of time, man had always controlled machines from the outside, your tuned some knobs and set some switches and the gadgets did your bidding. Therefore, with “program-stored computers”, it was the opposite.

As it tuned out, EDVAC wasn’t completed until 1952. The computer was stored in a large room were it occupied all the space available. It used punched cards as input devices, therefore, it did not work exactly the same as our desktop computers, but with the invention of ENIAC, other more sophisticated computers would eventually come out and all this would eventually bring us the Pentium computer, which is the computer that we use today, for every day things like word processing, database development or simply to play games with your friend.

With the invention of a program-stored computer, some businesses would try to make a profit out of it and they did it. Who hasn’t heard of IBM? The direct descendant of Herman Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company, it is the fifth largest industrial corporation in America and the world’s biggest computer manufacturer. To a large degree, IBM is the computer industry, and almost every other computer company in the world swims in its ocean. It commands abut 40 percent of the international computer market, producing approximately three fourths of all medium and large-size computers and one fourth of all personal computers.

IBM started out in 1914, it was ran by Thomas J. Watson, Sr.. But it is really after 1950, when IBM was ran by Watson’s elder , that IBM took a step over every other computer business and became the company that we know today. With the invention of “intelligent” computers, IBM was about to enter an era of success that has not stopped since.

It is not a secret that businesses now depend on computers. Not only business, but any large organization who want to keep their “edge” in today’s world has to have a computer system. Businesses usually keep a list of all their employees and clients on huge databases, every report, note, memo or anything else that is of importance is stored on computers. Governments, use very expansive IBM mainframes to keep extraordinary databases of all its population. Schools and Hospitals are other examples of organizations that depend on computers.

Businesses depend so much on computers that it is hard to think how they were doing it before the invention of computers. Of course, with the use of computers, Business can be much larger and expand at an

Bibliography

References

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Rochlin, Gene. Trapped in the Net. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1997.

Augarten, Stan. Bit by Bit. New York, Library of Congress cataloging in publication data, 1984.