A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically

carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of

operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of
problem.

Conventionally a computer consists of some form of memory for data storage, at least
one element that carries out arithmetic and logic operations, and a sequencing and control
element that can change the order of operations based on the information that is stored.
Peripheral devices allow information to be entered from external source, and allow the
results of operations to be sent out.

A computer's processing unit executes series of instructions that make it read, manipulate
and then store data. Conditional instructions change the sequence of instructions as a
function of the current state of the machine or its environment.

The first electronic computers were developed in the mid-20th century (1940–1945).
Originally, they were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several
hundred modern personal computers (PCs).[1]

Modern computers based on integrated circuits are millions to billions of times more
capable than the early machines, and occupy a fraction of the space.[2] Simple computers
are small enough to fit into mobile devices, and can be powered by a small battery.
Personal computers in their various forms are icons of the Information Age and are what
most people think of as "computers". However, the embedded computers found in many
devices from MP3 players to fighter aircraft and from toys to industrial robots are the
most numerous.

History of computing
Main article: History of computing hardware

The first use of the word "computer" was recorded in 1613, referring to a person who
carried out calculations, or computations, and the word continued with the same meaning
until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century onwards, the word
began to take on its more familiar meaning, describing a machine that carries out
computations.[3]

Limited-function early computers

The Jacquard loom, on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester,
England, was one of the first programmable devices.

The history of the modern computer begins with two separate technologies—automated
calculation and programmability—but no single device can be identified as the earliest
computer, partly because of the inconsistent application of that term. A few devices are
worth mentioning though, like some mechanical aids to computing, which were very
successful and survived for centuries until the advent of the electronic calculator, like the
Sumerian abacus, designed around 2500 BC[4] which descendant won a speed
competition against a modern desk calculating machine in Japan in 1946,[5] the slide
rules, invented in the 1620s, which were carried on five Apollo space missions, including
to the moon[6] and arguably the astrolabe and the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient
astronomical computer built by the Greeks around 80 BC.[7] The Greek mathematician
Hero of Alexandria (c. 10–70 AD) built a mechanical theater which performed a play
lasting 10 minutes and was operated by a complex system of ropes and drums that might
be considered to be a means of deciding which parts of the mechanism performed which
actions and when.[8] This is the essence of programmability.

Around the end of the tenth century, the French monk Gerbert d'Aurillac brought back
from Spain the drawings of a machine invented by the Moors that answered Yes or No to
the questions it was asked (binary arithmetic).[9] Again in the thirteenth century, the
monks Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon built talking androids without any further
development (Albertus Magnus complained that he had wasted forty years of his life
when Thomas Aquinas, terrified by his machine, destroyed it).[10] In the same century
analog computers like the castle clock of Al-Jazari were invented.

In 1642, the Renaissance saw the invention of the mechanical calculator,[11] a device that
could perform all four arithmetic operations without relying on human intelligence. [12]
The mechanical calculator was at the root of the development of computers in two
separate ways ; initially, it is in trying to develop more powerful and more flexible
calculators[13] that the computer was first theorized by Charles Babbage[14][15] and then
developed,[16] leading to the development of mainframe computers in the 1960s, but also
the microprocessor, which started the personal computer revolution, and which is now at
the heart of all computer systems regardless of size or purpose,[17] was invented
serendipitously by Intel[18] during the development of an electronic calculator, a direct
descendant to the mechanical calculator.[19]

First general-purpose computers

In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard made an improvement to the textile loom by introducing
a series of punched paper cards as a template which allowed his loom to weave intricate
patterns automatically. The resulting Jacquard loom was an important step in the
development of computers because the use of punched cards to define woven patterns can
be viewed as an early, albeit limited, form of programmability.

The Most Famous Image in the Early History of Computing[20]

This portrait of Jacquard was woven in silk on a Jacquard loom and required 24,000
punched cards to create (1839). It was only produced to order. Charles Babbage owned
one of these portraits ; it inspired him in using perforated cards in his analytical engine[21]
It was the fusion of automatic calculation with programmability that produced the first
recognizable computers. In 1837, Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and
design a fully programmable mechanical computer, his analytical engine.[22] Limited
finances and Babbage's inability to resist tinkering with the design meant that the device
was never completed ; nevertheless his son, Henry Babbage, completed a simplified
version of the analytical engine's computing unit (the mill) in 1888. He gave a successful
demonstration of its use in computing tables in 1906. This machine was given to the
Science museum in South Kensington in 1910.

In the late 1880s, Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a machine readable
medium. Prior uses of machine readable media, above, had been for control, not data.
"After some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards ..."[23] To process
these punched cards he invented the tabulator, and the keypunch machines. These three
inventions were the foundation of the modern information processing industry. Large-
scale automated data processing of punched cards was performed for the 1890 United
States Census by Hollerith's company, which later became the core of IBM. By the end of
the 19th century a number of technologies that would later prove useful in the realization
of practical computers had begun to appear: the punched card, Boolean algebra, the
vacuum tube (thermionic valve) and the teleprinter.

During the first half of the 20th century, many scientific computing needs were met by
increasingly sophisticated analog computers, which used a direct mechanical or electrical
model of the problem as a basis for computation. However, these were not programmable
and generally lacked the versatility and accuracy of modern digital computers.

Alan Turing is widely regarded to be the father of modern computer science. In 1936
Turing provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and
computation with the Turing machine, providing a blueprint for the electronic digital
computer.[24] Of his role in the creation of the modern computer, Time magazine in
naming Turing one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, states: "The
fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-
processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine".[24]

The Zuse Z3, 1941, considered the world's first working programmable, fully automatic
computing machine.

The ENIAC, which became operational in 1946, is considered to be the first general-
purpose electronic computer.
EDSAC was one of the first computers to implement the stored program (von Neumann)
architecture.

Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6.75 mm) in its packaging.

The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) was among the first electronic digital binary
computing devices. Conceived in 1937 by Iowa State College physics professor John
Atanasoff, and built with the assistance of graduate student Clifford Berry,[25] the machine
was not programmable, being designed only to solve systems of linear equations. The
computer did employ parallel computation. A 1973 court ruling in a patent dispute found
that the patent for the 1946 ENIAC computer derived from the Atanasoff–Berry
Computer.

The inventor of the program-controlled computer was Konrad Zuse, who built the first
working computer in 1941 and later in 1955 the first computer based on magnetic
storage.[26]

George Stibitz is internationally recognized as a father of the modern digital computer.

While working at Bell Labs in November 1937, Stibitz invented and built a relay-based
calculator he dubbed the "Model K" (for "kitchen table", on which he had assembled it),
which was the first to use binary circuits to perform an arithmetic operation. Later models
added greater sophistication including complex arithmetic and programmability.[27]
A succession of steadily more powerful and flexible computing devices were constructed
in the 1930s and 1940s, gradually adding the key features that are seen in modern
computers. The use of digital electronics (largely invented by Claude Shannon in 1937)
and more flexible programmability were vitally important steps, but defining one point
along this road as "the first digital electronic computer" is difficult. Shannon 1940 Notable
achievements include.

• Konrad Zuse's electromechanical "Z machines". The Z3 (1941) was the first
working machine featuring binary arithmetic, including floating point arithmetic
and a measure of programmability. In 1998 the Z3 was proved to be Turing
complete, therefore being the world's first operational computer.[28]
• The non-programmable Atanasoff–Berry Computer (commenced in 1937,
completed in 1941) which used vacuum tube based computation, binary numbers,
and regenerative capacitor memory. The use of regenerative memory allowed it to
be much more compact than its peers (being approximately the size of a large
desk or workbench), since intermediate results could be stored and then fed back
into the same set of computation elements.
• The secret British Colossus computers (1943),[29] which had limited
programmability but demonstrated that a device using thousands of tubes could be
reasonably reliable and electronically reprogrammable. It was used for breaking
German wartime codes.
• The Harvard Mark I (1944), a large-scale electromechanical computer with
limited programmability.[30]
• The U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory ENIAC (1946), which used
decimal arithmetic and is sometimes called the first general purpose electronic
computer (since Konrad Zuse's Z3 of 1941 used electromagnets instead of
electronics). Initially, however, ENIAC had an inflexible architecture which
essentially required rewiring to change its programming.

Stored-program architecture

Several developers of ENIAC, recognizing its flaws, came up with a far more flexible
and elegant design, which came to be known as the "stored program architecture" or von
Neumann architecture. This design was first formally described by John von Neumann in
the paper First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, distributed in 1945. A number of
projects to develop computers based on the stored-program architecture commenced
around this time, the first of these being completed in Great Britain. The first working
prototype to be demonstrated was the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine
(SSEM or "Baby") in 1948. The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator
(EDSAC), completed a year after the SSEM at Cambridge University, was the first
practical, non-experimental implementation of the stored program design and was put to
use immediately for research work at the university. Shortly thereafter, the machine
originally described by von Neumann's paper—EDVAC—was completed but did not see
full-time use for an additional two years.
Nearly all modern computers implement some form of the stored-program architecture,
making it the single trait by which the word "computer" is now defined. While the
technologies used in computers have changed dramatically since the first electronic,
general-purpose computers of the 1940s, most still use the von Neumann architecture.

Beginning in the 1950s, Soviet scientists Sergei Sobolev and Nikolay Brusentsov
conducted research on ternary computers, devices that operated on a base three
numbering system of −1, 0, and 1 rather than the conventional binary numbering system
upon which most computers are based. They designed the Setun, a functional ternary
computer, at Moscow State University. The device was put into limited production in the
Soviet Union, but supplanted by the more common binary architecture.

Semiconductors and microprocessors

Computers using vacuum tubes as their electronic elements were in use throughout the
1950s, but by the 1960s had been largely replaced by transistor-based machines, which
were smaller, faster, cheaper to produce, required less power, and were more reliable.
The first transistorised computer was demonstrated at the University of Manchester in
1953.[31] In the 1970s, integrated circuit technology and the subsequent creation of
microprocessors, such as the Intel 4004, further decreased size and cost and further
increased speed and reliability of computers. By the late 1970s, many products such as
video recorders contained dedicated computers called microcontrollers, and they started
to appear as a replacement to mechanical controls in domestic appliances such as
washing machines. The 1980s witnessed home computers and the now ubiquitous
personal computer. With the evolution of the Internet, personal computers are becoming
as common as the television and the telephone in the household[citation needed].

Modern smartphones are fully programmable computers in their own right, and as of
2009 may well be the most common form of such computers in existence[citation needed].