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A Brief History of the Computer (b.c. - 1993a.d.)
by Jeremy Meyers Note: Yes, a lot of this is from Grolier’s Encyclopedia. Hey, I was young. I didn’t know any better. Credit where credit is due. Also, this information is only current as of the early 1990’s (1993, to be exact), and no I’m not planning to add more information anytime soon. I would not recommend scamming this for your own homework, as some of the conclusions are rather humorous today.
Citing This Work
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a reference in creating your own paper or research work on the subject. Please don’t just copy this paper verbatim and submit it as your own work, as I put a lot of time and effort into it. Plus, it’s bad karma. If you would like to use this work, please use this citation in your bibliography: Meyers, Jeremy, “A Short History of the Computer” [Online] Available ([current date])
Table of Contents:
1) In The Beginning… 2) Babbage 5) The Modern “Stored Program” EDC 6) Advances in the 1950s
3) Use of Punched Cards by Hollerith 7) Advances in the 1960s 4) Electronic Digital Computers 8) Recent Advances
In The Beginning…
The history of computers starts out about 2000 years ago, at the birth of the abacus, a wooden rack holding two horizontal wires with beads strung on them. When these beads are moved around, according to programming rules memorized by the user, all regular arithmetic problems can be done. Another important invention around the same time was the Astrolabe, used for navigation. Blaise Pascal is usually credited for building the first digital computer in 1642. It added numbers entered with dials and was made to help his father, a tax collector. In 1671, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz invented a computer that was built in 1694. It could add, and, after changing some things around, multiply. Leibniz invented a special stepped gear mechanism for introducing the addend
digits, and this is still being used. The prototypes made by Pascal...
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