Fab Essay, Research Paper

The history of the computer began 2000 years ago with the invention of the abacus. Though this invention only allowed for simple arithmetic calculations, it was still very effective. A great many years after this, another calculation device, the first digital calculator, was created by Blaise Pascal in order to help his father who was a tax collector . A bit more than two hundred years after this, Charles Babbage created the first automatic calculator that was powered by steam. This is especially important in the development of the computer because this machine could store data and program the machine with imputs . These were the early days of computers.

By the 1890?s computers became used much more frequently and were especially important for the US Census. The population was growing fast and the government needed a better way to keep track of all the people. Herman Hollerith and Jmes Powers created a punch card data storage device that was extremely fast and efficient by the standards of those days. One operator could process up to 8000 punch cards per day .

The first fully automatic machine was created in the 1930?s by IBM (International Business Machines). It accepted input from punch cards and was able to perform calculations with no human assistance because it was electric. This invention lead to the development of the first high- speed computer called ENIAC. This could perform three hundred multiplication calculations per second and sparked mathematician John von Neumann to study the computer and figure out how to best organize computers for the future. This man is responsible for the idea of RAM (Random Access Memory), an amazing breakthrough in science.

From this point computers progressed on and on. Processors were created that continued to speed things up and computers got smaller and smaller. What people can do toady on a simple hand held PDA, they couldn?t have even dreamed of in the 1950?s.