From Abacus to SoCs

A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out arithmetic or logical operations automatically.
Computers can perform a wide range of tasks through programs.
Computers can be used as control systems in industrial and consumer products.
Early computers were used only for calculations, and mechanical devices were built to automate long, tedious tasks.
The first digital electronic calculating machines were developed during World War II, leading to the microprocessor and the microcomputer revolution in the 1970s.
A modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically a central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a microprocessor, along with some type of computer memory.
Peripheral devices include input devices, output devices, and input/output devices.
The word "computer" originally referred to a human computer, a person who carried out calculations or computations.
Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, including the abacus and the slide rule.
Mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and navigation use.

Charles Babbage invented the first mechanical computer in the early 19th century.
The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine invented by Lord Kelvin in 1872.
The first electromechanical analog computer was developed by the US Navy in 1938.
The Z3, built by Konrad Zuse in 1941, was the world's first working electromechanical programmable digital computer.
The Z4, built by Zuse in 1950, was the world's first commercial computer.
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was the first automatic electronic digital computer, developed in the US in 1942.
Colossus, built in 1943, was the world's first electronic digital programmable computer.
ENIAC, built in the US in 1945, was the first electronic programmable computer.
The principle of the modern computer was proposed by Alan Turing in his 1936 paper, On Computable Numbers.
Modern computers are based on the concept of a universal Turing machine.

Turing proposed the stored-program computer in 1936, allowing instructions to be stored in memory.
The Manchester Baby was the first stored-program computer, followed by the Ferranti Mark 1.
Grace Hopper developed the first compiler for a programming language.
Transistors replaced vacuum tubes in computer designs in the 1950s.
The MOSFET transistor was invented in 1959, leading to the microcomputer revolution.
The integrated circuit (IC) was invented by Kilby and Noyce in the late 1950s.
MOS ICs led to the invention of the microprocessor, starting with the Intel 4004.
MOS IC technology enabled the integration of over 10,000 transistors on a single chip.
System on a Chip (SoCs) are complete computers on a microchip.
SoCs may or may not have integrated RAM and flash memory.
Computers have advanced greatly since the first one in 1945, with modern SoCs being the size of a coin and hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC.
The first mobile computers were heavy and ran from mains power, but laptops removed this requirement by incorporating batteries.
Portable computers grew in popularity in the 2000s, and smartphones and tablets became the dominant computing device on the market.
Computers can be classified by architecture, size, form-factor, and purpose.
Hardware covers all the tangible physical parts of a computer, including circuits, computer chips, graphic cards, sound cards, memory, motherboard, displays, power supplies, cables, keyboards, printers, and input devices.
A general-purpose computer has four main components: the arithmetic logic unit (ALU), the control unit, the memory, and the input and output devices (I/O).
Input devices include hand-operated or automated devices that send unprocessed data to the computer.
Output devices include the means through which the computer gives output.
The control unit manages the computer's various components, reads and interprets program instructions, and transforms them into control signals that activate other parts of the computer.
The ALU is capable of performing arithmetic and logic operations, and the memory can be viewed as a list of cells into which numbers can be placed or read.