Introduction to Computers

Akhil Hakkim

S1-IT, 2020-24

Introduction to Computers

It's quite overwhelming to look into the rate at which new innovations that change the way we live keep popping up. 

Moore's Law Graph (Our world in Data)

With the development in technology, so has grown the user base and feasibility. The growth has been absolutely exponential. So what next, development is unpredictable, we have newer fields being discovered every day, newer skills developed, newer challenges faced and newer solutions. 

So what can we consider led to the development of all the latest technology, while there may be many factors, one of them certainly is the computing power. With the onset of transistors(yes the thingy that goes on and off based on the flow of current) and the ever decreasing sizes of chips(not the eating kind) and the improvement, we were able to store and process more, which is the fundamental element of any new age technology. So it is very crucial to understand what happens to our computer at the hardware level and that is what we'll be seeing through our next series of articles.

What exactly is a Computer ?

Fun fact: Before computers were commercially available, a person who used to perform calculations were known as computers.

So connecting with that meaning, we can tell a computer is a device that stores and processes data by performing calculations. Yes, the computers we use for all sorts of purposes are just very fast calculators, and in fact, the earliest known computers were the Abacus where the user had to perform calculations.

With time and research the computers were able to do more complex calculations, like the difference engine which could calculate complex nos and then the analytical engine that were able to solve equations themselves and to this an algorithm or a step by step instruction to do a particular problem was added which became the first program. Shortly after, instead of punch cards at that time, transistors came and revolutionized the computer industry forever. Remember I told about the computer being just a super calculator, math is indeed a universal language and anything and everything can be represented in terms of numbers, the graphics we see, the sound we hear and so on... which we'll be looking throughout the series.

Okay I think that will be okay for the introduction, it might be a lot to take in but hurray! Thankyou for staying till the last and keep waiting for the next section.

List of References:

Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie (2013) - "Technological Progress". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/technological-progress' [Online Resource]