Whether we like it or not, computers have infiltrated every aspect of our society. For instance: supermarket scanners calculate our bill while keeping store inventory, computerized telephone switching centers play traffic cop to millions of calls and keep lines of communication untangled, and atm's let us conduct banking transactions from virtually anywhere in the world. But where did all this technology come from and where is it heading? to fully understand and appreciate the impact computers have on our lives and promises they hold for the future, it is important to understand their evolution. The real beginnings of computers start with an english mathematics professor, charles babbage. Frustrated at many errors he found while examining calculations for the royal astronomical society, he declared, i wish to god these calculations had been performed by steam! with those words, the automation of computers had begun. By 1812, babbage noticed a harmony between machines and mathematics: machines were best at performing tasks repeatedly without mistake, while mathematics often required a repetition of steps.

Babbage's first attempt was in 1822 when he proposed a machine to perform differential equations, called a difference engine. The machine would have a stored program and could perform calculations and print the results automatically. After working on the difference engine for ten years, babbage was suddenly inspired to begin work on the first general purpose computer, which he called the analytical engine. Babbage's assistant, augusta ada king, daughter of poet lord byron, was instrumental in the machine's design.

One of the few people who understood the engine's design as well as perhaps the earliest device for working out sums was the abacus. Pebbles were then placed or taken away from grooves to perform addition and subtraction. Because the pebbles were likely to become mislaid, they were later replaced by beads threaded on to wires and mounted in a frame. By moving the beads backwards and forwards, addition, subtraction, division and multiplication could be done. In 1614 john napier, an astronomer, invented a ready reckoned, known as napier's bones, to help him make complex calculations accurately. The first real mechanical calculating machine, working with wheels, gears and dials, was made by a frenchmen, blaise pascal, in 1642. This machine used a number of wheels mounted parallel to each other, with 10 teeth mounted round the circumference of each.

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A carry over mechanism was incorporated so that when one wheel made a complete revolution, the wheel to its immediate left was turned through one segment representing one ' 10'. The machine was operated by turning the wheels backwards and forwards, thus performing addition and subtraction. The design for the first real computer was drawn up by an englishman, charles babbage, in 1832. This was another mechanical machine but, like today's computers, it was designed to work automatically from a series of program instructions and also had the capacity to store the information on which it was working up to 10 groups of 50 decimal digits. Unfortunately, the technology of the day delay was insufficiently advanced to manufacture the parts required for die machine and so it was never made.

This was at harvard university in america and was known as an automatic sequence controlled calculator ascc. It was still, however, basically a mechanical device, rather like the one babbage had designed, and therefore, comparatively slow, taking about 4 seconds to perform a multiplication problem. To develop a computer that would work really fast it was necessary to get away completely from the mechanical operation that had been used until now and have a machine, without moving parts that worked in terms electric pulses flowing through it.

The first automatic electronic computer was completed in pennsylvania in 1946 and known as eniac electronic numerical integrator and calculator. It was a massive machine containing some 18,0 thermion valves and weighing some 30 tonnes. Since then, many inventions innovations and developments have been applies to this basic principle resulting in the extremely powerful and fast machine in current use. One of the more important developments was the introduction of devices that would record and hold information magnetically on magnetic tapes, discs and drums.

A system was also developed of holding numbers magnetically in a series of small magnetically rings. These were first used in computers in the early 1960's to replace the thermion valves and diodes used in the earlier machines. This resulted in a considerable reduction in the size and a great increase in the power of computers.