A computer is a programmable device for processing, storing, and displaying information. Learn more in this article about modern digital electronic computers and their design, constituent parts, and applications as well as about the history of computing.
Before Babbage there is no evidence that anyone had ever conceived of such a device, let alone attempted to build one. The machine was designed to consist of four components: the mill, the store, the reader, and the printer. These components are the essential components of every computer today.
A computer is a machine that can store and process information. Most computers rely on a binary system, which uses two variables, 0 and 1, to complete tasks such as storing data, calculating algorithms, and displaying information.
Computer, device for processing, storing, and displaying information. Computer once meant a person who did computations, but now the term almost universally refers to automated electronic machinery.
Computer architecture, structure of a digital computer, encompassing the design and layout of its instruction set and storage registers. The architecture of a computer is chosen with regard to the types of programs that will be run on it (business, scientific, general-purpose, etc.).
Computer - History, Technology, Innovation: A computer might be described with deceptive simplicity as “an apparatus that performs routine calculations automatically.”
Computer science is the study of computers and computing, including their theoretical and algorithmic foundations, hardware and software, and their uses for processing information.
Computer - Memory, Storage, Processing: The earliest forms of computer main memory were mercury delay lines, which were tubes of mercury that stored data as ultrasonic waves, and cathode-ray tubes, which stored data as charges on the tubes’ screens.
In 1994 Leonard Adleman, a mathematician at the University of Southern California, demonstrated the first DNA computer by solving a simple example of what is known as the traveling salesman problem.