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1 day ago · A year later, fledgling company Microsoft purchased exclusive rights to sell the system, renamed MS-DOS, to IBM for their newly developed IBM-PC. IBM-compatible versions were marketed as PC-DOS. Version 1.0 was released in 1981; additional upgraded versions kept pace with the rapidly evolving PC. Windows 95, introduced by Microsoft in 1995 ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Overview
- Computing basics
- Analog computers
- Digital computers
A computer is a machine that can store and process information. Most computers rely on a binary system, which uses two variables, 0 and 1, to complete tasks such as storing data, calculating algorithms, and displaying information. Computers come in many different shapes and sizes, from handheld smartphones to supercomputers weighing more than 300 tons.
Who invented the computer?
Many people throughout history are credited with developing early prototypes that led to the modern computer. During World War II, physicist John Mauchly, engineer J. Presper Eckert, Jr., and their colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania designed the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC).
What is the most powerful computer in the world?
As of November 2021 the most powerful computer in the world is the Japanese supercomputer Fugaku, developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu. It has been used to model COVID-19 simulations.
How do programming languages work?
The first computers were used primarily for numerical calculations. However, as any information can be numerically encoded, people soon realized that computers are capable of general-purpose information processing. Their capacity to handle large amounts of data has extended the range and accuracy of weather forecasting. Their speed has allowed them to make decisions about routing telephone connections through a network and to control mechanical systems such as automobiles, nuclear reactors, and robotic surgical tools. They are also cheap enough to be embedded in everyday appliances and to make clothes dryers and rice cookers “smart.” Computers have allowed us to pose and answer questions that could not be pursued before. These questions might be about DNA sequences in genes, patterns of activity in a consumer market, or all the uses of a word in texts that have been stored in a database. Increasingly, computers can also learn and adapt as they operate.
Computers also have limitations, some of which are theoretical. For example, there are undecidable propositions whose truth cannot be determined within a given set of rules, such as the logical structure of a computer. Because no universal algorithmic method can exist to identify such propositions, a computer asked to obtain the truth of such a proposition will (unless forcibly interrupted) continue indefinitely—a condition known as the “halting problem.” (See Turing machine.) Other limitations reflect current technology. Human minds are skilled at recognizing spatial patterns—easily distinguishing among human faces, for instance—but this is a difficult task for computers, which must process information sequentially, rather than grasping details overall at a glance. Another problematic area for computers involves natural language interactions. Because so much common knowledge and contextual information is assumed in ordinary human communication, researchers have yet to solve the problem of providing relevant information to general-purpose natural language programs.
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Analog computers use continuous physical magnitudes to represent quantitative information. At first they represented quantities with mechanical components (see differential analyzer and integrator), but after World War II voltages were used; by the 1960s digital computers had largely replaced them. Nonetheless, analog computers, and some hybrid digital-analog systems, continued in use through the 1960s in tasks such as aircraft and spaceflight simulation.
One advantage of analog computation is that it may be relatively simple to design and build an analog computer to solve a single problem. Another advantage is that analog computers can frequently represent and solve a problem in “real time”; that is, the computation proceeds at the same rate as the system being modeled by it. Their main disadvantages are that analog representations are limited in precision—typically a few decimal places but fewer in complex mechanisms—and general-purpose devices are expensive and not easily programmed.
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In contrast to analog computers, digital computers represent information in discrete form, generally as sequences of 0s and 1s (binary digits, or bits). The modern era of digital computers began in the late 1930s and early 1940s in the United States, Britain, and Germany. The first devices used switches operated by electromagnets (relays). Their pr...
Apr 19, 2024 · Wikipedia, free Internet-based encyclopaedia, started in 2001, that operates under an open-source management style. It is overseen by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia uses a collaborative software known as wiki that facilitates the creation and development of articles. Although some highly publicized problems have called attention ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Apr 30, 2024 · Linus Torvalds. Born: December 28, 1969, Helsinki, Finland (age 54) Inventions: Linux. Subjects Of Study: operating system. Linus Torvalds (born December 28, 1969, Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish computer scientist who was the principal force behind the development of the Linux operating system. At age 10 Torvalds began to dabble in computer ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
John Michael Wallace-Hadrill Patrick J. Geary. History of Germany, a survey of important events and people in the history of Germany from ancient times to the present. Germanic peoples occupied much of the present-day territory of Germany in ancient times. The Germanic peoples are those who spoke one of the Germanic languages, and they thus.
Britannica’s new platform provides content designed and written specifically for early learners. Creating a more engaging and fun learning experience for students, the activities in Britannica Fundamentals align with the content areas children learn in the classroom.
6 days ago · The city’s mean annual temperature is about 48 °F (9 °C), and mean temperatures range from 30 °F (−1 °C) in winter to 65 °F (18 °C) in summer. The average precipitation is 22 inches (568 mm). About one-fifth to one-fourth of the total falls as snow. Berlin, capital and chief urban center of Germany. The city lies at the heart of the ...
