COMPUTERS

Computers are penetrating all spheres of human activity, in many of them they have become indispensible. They calculate orbits, guide spaceships and planes, calculate the targets of economic development, play chess, teach pupils. It’s hard to enumerate all the uses the computer may be put to.

The first suggestion that the machine for mathematical computation could be built was made more than three hundred years ago by Blaise Pascal in 1640. An original calculator by Pascal is preserved in the Zwinger Museum.

In 1833 Charles Babbage built the machine Babbage’s huge computer – machine was to have been programmed from a punched paper tape. The calculations were to be made by means of thousand of rotating gear- wheels, and moving levers and rods.

During World War II, the British Bletchley Park (40 miles north of London) achieved a number of successes at breaking encrypted German military communications. The German machine, Enigma, was attacked with the help of electro-mechanical machines called bombes. The bomb designed by Alan Turing in 1941.

The development of computers began at IBM's Endicott laboratories on the Harvard Mark I. There are several generations of computers.

The first generation

The second generation

The third generation

The fourth generation

The fifth generation

The sixth generation (future generation)

Structure of the modern computer

monitor

Speakers

keyboard mouse

System unit