History Of The Computer Industry In America

9 Pages 2267 Words

Only once in a lifetime will a new invention come about to touch
every aspect of our lives. Such a device that changes the way we work,
live, and play is a special one, indeed. A machine that has done all this
and more now exists in nearly every business in the U.S. and one out of
every two households (Hall, 156). This incredible invention is the
computer. The electronic computer has been around for over a half-century,
but its ancestors have been around for 2000 years. However, only in the
last 40 years has it changed the American society. From the first wooden
abacus to the latest high-speed microprocessor, the computer has changed
nearly every aspect of people's lives for the better.The very earliest
existence of the modern day computer's ancestor is the abacus. These date
back to almost 2000 years ago. It is simply a wooden rack holding parallel
wires on which beads are strung. When these beads are moved along the wire
according to "programming" rules that the user must me! morize, all
ordinary arithmetic operations can be performed (Soma, 14). The next
innovation in computers took place in 1694 when Blaise Pascal invented the
first "digital calculating machine". It could only add numbers and they
had to be entered by turning dials. It was designed to help Pascal's
father who was a tax collector (Soma, 32).

In the early 1800Os, a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage
designed an automatic calculation machine. It was steam powered and could
store up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Built in to his machine were operations
that included everything a modern general-purpose computer would need. It
was programmed by--and stored data on--cards with holes punched in them,
appropriately called "punch cards". His inventions were failures for the
most part because of the lack of precision machining techniques used at
the time and the lack of demand for such a device (Soma, 46).After
Babbage, people began to lose in...