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posted by n1 on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the wikipedia-is-news,-kind-of... dept.

Wikipedia has an interesting article on the history of computers/hardware

The history of computing hardware covers the developments from early simple devices to aid calculation to modern day computers. Before the 20th century, most calculations were done by humans. Early mechanical tools to help humans with digital calculations, such as the abacus, were called "calculating machines", by proprietary names, or even as they are now, calculators. The machine operator was called the computer.

The first aids to computation were purely mechanical devices which required the operator to set up the initial values of an elementary arithmetic operation, then manipulate the device to obtain the result. Later, computers represented numbers in a continuous form, for instance distance along a scale, rotation of a shaft, or a voltage. Numbers could also be represented in the form of digits, automatically manipulated by a mechanical mechanism. Although this approach generally required more complex mechanisms, it greatly increased the precision of results. A series of breakthroughs, such as miniaturized transistor computers, and the integrated circuit, caused digital computers to largely replace analog computers.

I remember my dad talking about punching cards to Program the huge computer at Queens university. In high school, I was filling in the cards with a pencil. My young (at the time) brother-in-law won a vic-20 and was typing his commands.

My first personal computer was an Acorn Atom... I could only dream of the 64k that Bill Gates said was enough for anyone. I could never get the cassette tape to record my carefully typed and debugged programs.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @07:00AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @07:00AM (#431103)

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  • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday November 22 2016, @07:12AM

    by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 22 2016, @07:12AM (#431108)

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