For the consumer oriented device which is also usually just called a computer, see Personal

computer.

For other uses, see Computer (disambiguation).

Computers and computing devices from different eras—left to right, top to bottom:

• Early vacuum tube computer (ENIAC)

• Mainframe computer (IBM System/360)

• Smartphone (LYF Water 2)

• Desktop computer (IBM ThinkCentre S50 with monitor)

• Video game console (Nintendo GameCube)

• Supercomputer (IBM Summit)

A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences

of arithmetic or logical operations (computation). Modern digital electronic computers can
perform generic sets of operations known as programs, which enable computers to perform a
wide range of tasks. The term computer system may refer to a nominally complete computer
that includes the hardware, operating system, software, and peripheral equipment needed and
used for full operation, or to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as
a computer network or computer cluster.

A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems,
including simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls, and
factory devices like industrial robots. Computers are at the core of general-purpose devices
such as personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones. Computers power
the Internet, which links billions of computers and users.

Early computers were meant to be used only for calculations. Simple manual instruments like
the abacus have aided people in doing calculations since ancient times. Early in the Industrial
Revolution, some mechanical devices were built to automate long, tedious tasks, such as
guiding patterns for looms. More sophisticated electrical machines did
specialized analog calculations in the early 20th century. The first digital electronic calculating
machines were developed during World War II, both electromechanical and using thermionic
valves. The first semiconductor transistors in the late 1940s were followed by the silicon-
based MOSFET (MOS transistor) and monolithic integrated circuit chip technologies in the late
1950s, leading to the microprocessor and the microcomputer revolution in the 1970s. The
speed, power, and versatility of computers have been increasing dramatically ever since then,
with transistor counts increasing at a rapid pace (Moore's law noted that counts doubled every
two years), leading to the Digital Revolution during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Conventionally, a modern computer consists of at least one processing element, typically

a central processing unit (CPU) in the form of a microprocessor, together with some type
of computer memory, typically semiconductor memory chips. The processing element carries
out arithmetic and logical operations, and a sequencing and control unit can change the order
of operations in response to stored information. Peripheral devices include input devices
(keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc.), output devices (monitors, printers, etc.), and input/output
devices that perform both functions (e.g. touchscreens). Peripheral devices allow information
to be retrieved from an external source, and they enable the results of operations to be saved
and retrieved.

Etymology
 A human computer, with microscope and
calculator, 1952

It was not until the mid-20th century that the word acquired its modern definition; according to
the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the word computer was in a different
sense, in a 1613 book called The Yong Mans Gleanings by the English writer Richard Brathwait:
"I haue [sic] read the truest computer of Times, and the best Arithmetician that euer [sic]
breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number." This usage of the term referred to
a human computer, a person who carried out calculations or computations. The word
continued to have the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. During the latter part
of this period, women were often hired as computers because they could be paid less than their
male counterparts.[1] By 1943, most human computers were women.[2]

The Online Etymology Dictionary gives the first attested use of computer in the 1640s, meaning
'one who calculates'; this is an "agent noun from compute (v.)". The Online Etymology
Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean "'calculating machine' (of any type) is from
1897." The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the "modern use" of the term, to mean
'programmable digital electronic computer' dates from "1945 under this name; [in a] theoretical
[sense] from 1937, as Turing machine".[3] The name has remained, although modern computers
are capable of many higher-level functions.

History

Main articles: History of computing and History of computing hardware

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of computing.

Pre-20th century
 The Ishango bone, a bone tool dating back to prehistoric Africa

Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one
correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was most likely a form of tally stick.
Later record keeping aids throughout the Fertile Crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones,
etc.) which represented counts of items, likely livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked
clay containers.[a][4] The use of counting rods is one example.

The Chinese suanpan (算盘). The number represented

on this abacus is 6,302,715,408.

The abacus was initially used for arithmetic tasks. The Roman abacus was developed from
devices used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BCE. Since then, many other forms of reckoning
boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered
cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules,
as an aid to calculating sums of money.[5]

The Antikythera mechanism, dating back to ancient

Greece circa 200–80 BCE, is an early analog computing device.
The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer,
according to Derek J. de Solla Price.[6] It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It
was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera,
between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to approximately c. 100 BCE. Devices of
comparable complexity to the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until the fourteenth
century.[7]

Many mechanical aids to calculation and measurement were constructed for astronomical and
navigation use. The planisphere was a star chart invented by Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī in the early
11th century.[8] The astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world in either the 1st or 2nd
centuries BCE and is often attributed to Hipparchus. A combination of
the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog computer capable of
working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. An astrolabe
incorporating a mechanical calendar computer[9][10] and gear-wheels was invented by Abi Bakr
of Isfahan, Persia in 1235.[11] Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī invented the first mechanical
geared lunisolar calendar astrolabe,[12] an early fixed-wired knowledge processing
machine[13] with a gear train and gear-wheels,[14] c. 1000 AD.

The sector, a calculating instrument used for solving problems in proportion, trigonometry,
multiplication and division, and for various functions, such as squares and cube roots, was
developed in the late 16th century and found application in gunnery, surveying and navigation.

The planimeter was a manual instrument to calculate the area of a closed figure by tracing over
it with a mechanical linkage.

A slide rule

The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, by the English clergyman William Oughtred,
shortly after the publication of the concept of the logarithm. It is a hand-operated analog
computer for doing multiplication and division. As slide rule development progressed, added
scales provided reciprocals, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, as well
as transcendental functions such as logarithms and exponentials, circular
and hyperbolic trigonometry and other functions. Slide rules with special scales are still used
for quick performance of routine calculations, such as the E6B circular slide rule used for time
and distance calculations on light aircraft.

In the 1770s, Pierre Jaquet-Droz, a Swiss watchmaker, built a mechanical doll (automaton) that
could write holding a quill pen. By switching the number and order of its internal wheels
different letters, and hence different messages, could be produced. In effect, it could be
mechanically "programmed" to read instructions. Along with two other complex machines, the
doll is at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and still operates.[15]

In 1831–1835, mathematician and engineer Giovanni Plana devised a Perpetual Calendar

machine, which through a system of pulleys and cylinders could predict the perpetual
calendar for every year from 0 CE (that is, 1 BCE) to 4000 CE, keeping track of leap years and
varying day length. The tide-predicting machine invented by the Scottish scientist Sir William
Thomson in 1872 was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters. It used a system of pulleys
and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular
location.

The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential

equations by integration, used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. In 1876,
Sir William Thomson had already discussed the possible construction of such calculators, but
he had been stymied by the limited output torque of the ball-and-disk integrators.[16] In a
differential analyzer, the output of one integrator drove the input of the next integrator, or a
graphing output. The torque amplifier was the advance that allowed these machines to work.
Starting in the 1920s, Vannevar Bush and others developed mechanical differential analyzers.

In the 1890s, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo began to develop a series of
advanced analog machines that could solve real and complex roots
of polynomials,[17][18][19][20] which were published in 1901 by the Paris Academy of Sciences.[21]