I know what a computer is?
So what is a computer exactly?
Depending on who you ask, the answer will vary. or is it whom .... whom indeed ....
Many "dictionaries" claim a computer is some type of magician's code that derives from the infamous Eel Lecture City, and turns thought stuffs into tri-corn dust, allowing the wielder of said magical enchantment to have powers greater than the beard of Zeus!
BUUUUUUuuuutttt ... a computer is actually just about anything that can compute.
Seems kind of like an obvious point, amaright?!
Take this handy contraption here:
This crazy little thing is called an abacus .. Why? Ah, because!
Many would not consider that cool masterpiece of beads, wire and wood a, quote-unquote, computer. Yet, that was one of the first, quote-unquote, computers to touch the hands of a human!
There was also this crazy thing of, "Napier's bones" which Napier would claim he could "feel" the maths in his bones, so he made copies of his bones for people to run numbers with (actually, John Napier was a really famous math guy who turned a bunch of sticks and stuff into a really awesome mechanical calculator and is the basis for some of the stuff that we see later!).
From there, computers only got faster! We made this really cool mechanical calculator called a stepped reckoner, and we even turned a normal ruler, into a slide ruler! That let us compute larger numbers and other crazy math by just sliding a ruler between itself, that was just wizard level inconceivable!!1!!1
EVENTUALLY quite a few really hep cats came along and got tired of having to do things the old and uncool way, and they decided to put a bunch of gears and rods together to do all that tabulating and writing for them!
Thanks to Charles Babbage and his Difference engine, we started to get what we know now as "computers". As an avid cat and bird lover, Charles would probably be happy to know that he helped spawn so many cat videos and tweets.
Of course all of these things are very specific and not general purpose at all. So, along came a young buck by the name of Ada Lovelace, and she created formulas for a little thing called an analytical engine thought up by Babbage, that would allow for control flow and more than simply calculating when the next moon phase will be ... in other words, Ada was one of the first "computer programmers"!
And like underwear in a dryer, computers could only get smaller, and more stream lined!
With so many moving parts to manually muck with on all of these computers, making sure you entered the right numbers became an arduous task. Last thing you wanted was to spend 20 minutes hand cranking your calculator only to find out you entered a
Thus the elctro-mechanical revolution was born!
So what is a computer exactly?
Depending on who you ask, the answer will vary. or is it whom .... whom indeed ....
Many "dictionaries" claim a computer is some type of magician's code that derives from the infamous Eel Lecture City, and turns thought stuffs into tri-corn dust, allowing the wielder of said magical enchantment to have powers greater than the beard of Zeus!
BUUUUUUuuuutttt ... a computer is actually just about anything that can compute.
Seems kind of like an obvious point, amaright?!
Take this handy contraption here:
This crazy little thing is called an abacus .. Why? Ah, because!
Many would not consider that cool masterpiece of beads, wire and wood a, quote-unquote, computer. Yet, that was one of the first, quote-unquote, computers to touch the hands of a human!
There was also this crazy thing of, "Napier's bones" which Napier would claim he could "feel" the maths in his bones, so he made copies of his bones for people to run numbers with (actually, John Napier was a really famous math guy who turned a bunch of sticks and stuff into a really awesome mechanical calculator and is the basis for some of the stuff that we see later!).
From there, computers only got faster! We made this really cool mechanical calculator called a stepped reckoner, and we even turned a normal ruler, into a slide ruler! That let us compute larger numbers and other crazy math by just sliding a ruler between itself, that was just wizard level inconceivable!!1!!1
EVENTUALLY quite a few really hep cats came along and got tired of having to do things the old and uncool way, and they decided to put a bunch of gears and rods together to do all that tabulating and writing for them!
Thanks to Charles Babbage and his Difference engine, we started to get what we know now as "computers". As an avid cat and bird lover, Charles would probably be happy to know that he helped spawn so many cat videos and tweets.
Of course all of these things are very specific and not general purpose at all. So, along came a young buck by the name of Ada Lovelace, and she created formulas for a little thing called an analytical engine thought up by Babbage, that would allow for control flow and more than simply calculating when the next moon phase will be ... in other words, Ada was one of the first "computer programmers"!
And like underwear in a dryer, computers could only get smaller, and more stream lined!
With so many moving parts to manually muck with on all of these computers, making sure you entered the right numbers became an arduous task. Last thing you wanted was to spend 20 minutes hand cranking your calculator only to find out you entered a
VI instead of an IVThus the elctro-mechanical revolution was born!