A computer is a device for working with information. The information can be numbers, words, pictures, movies, or sounds. Computer information is also called data. Computers can process huge amounts of data very quickly. They also store and display data.
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People use computers every day at work, at school, and at home. Computers are used in factories to control how things are made and in offices to keep records. People also use computers for sending e-mail, writing reports, shopping, banking, listening to music, and playing games. The Internet, which is a huge network of linked computers, provides information from all over the world.
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Computers come in many forms. Supercomputers are very powerful and expensive computers that are used for complex work, such as forecasting the weather. Desktop personal computers, or PCs, are used for tasks at the office, at school, and at home. Laptops, notebooks, and tablet computers do the same things as PCs, but they are smaller and easy to carry. Personal digital assistants, or PDAs, are handheld computers. Some very small computers are used to control machines. They are built into such things as airplanes, robots in factories, cars, and even household appliances.
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A computer system requires both hardware and software. Hardware is the computer’s physical parts. Software is the programs, or instructions, that tell the hardware what to do.
All computers have the same basic hardware. The microprocessor is the computer’s “brain.” It is also called the CPU, or central processing unit. The microprocessor handles all the information that goes into and comes out of the computer. The memory is hardware that holds programs and data while the microprocessor uses it.
The programs and data are kept permanently on hardware called storage devices. Most computers have a storage device called a hard drive. The hard drive stores data on a metal disk inside the computer. Some storage devices put data on disks that can be easily moved from one computer to another. These disks include CDs and DVDs. They make it easy to share data.
Input and output devices are other types of hardware. Input devices let the user enter data or commands into the computer. Input devices include the keyboard and the mouse. Output devices let the user see or hear the results produced by the computer. Output devices include the monitor (or screen), printer, and speakers.
Communication, or network, devices connect computers to each other. They let people send data from one computer to another and connect to the Internet. Modems are communication devices that can send data through telephone wires or television cables. Some computers use wireless communication devices. They send data through the air using a small antenna.
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Computer software is divided into two basic types—the operating system and application software. The operating system controls how the different parts of hardware work together. Application software gives the computer instructions for doing specific tasks, such as word processing or playing games.
Most computers are electronic devices. This means that they work with electricity. All computer data is carried in tiny flows of electricity called electric currents. The microprocessor contains thousands or millions of tiny electronic parts called transistors. The transistors act as switches. They control how the electric currents flow.
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Computers use these electric currents to represent the numbers 0 and 1. Computers use only these two numbers because transistors, like light switches, have only two states—they are either on or off. A transistor that is “on” represents one of the numbers. A transistor that is “off” represents the other. Computers use strings of 0s and 1s to stand for letters, sounds, and all of the other data they handle. For example, a computer stores the word dog as three numbers: 01100100 (d), 01101111 (o), and 01100111 (g).
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Computers can understand only these patterns of 0s and 1s. All of the instructions that a computer follows have to be in this form. But people find it hard to work with long number patterns. So the people who write computer software, called computer programmers, have their own special languages. These include programming languages called BASIC, Java, and C++. The computer turns programming languages into the number patterns that it can understand.
Programmers use these languages to write instructions for the computer. The instructions tell the computer how to process data. The instructions consist of algorithms, which are a series of steps that are used to solve a problem.
An English inventor named Charles Babbage designed the first computer in the 1830s. It was mechanical, not electronic, because scientists did not yet know how electricity worked. The design called for more than 50,000 moving parts. The machine was designed to follow instructions that people entered using punched cards. It was so complex that Babbage never got it built. But it is still considered to be the first computer.
The first electronic computers were invented in the 1940s. In place of mechanical parts, they used electronic switching devices called vacuum tubes. These computers were so big that just one of them filled a whole room. They cost millions of dollars.
Computers improved after the transistor was invented in 1947. The transistor was an electronic switching device that was much smaller and worked better than a vacuum tube. By 1960 transistors had mostly replaced vacuum tubes in computers. The new computers were smaller and more affordable than before.
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The first computers with microprocessors appeared in the early 1970s. A microprocessor had many tiny transistors on one small wafer, or chip. It made personal computers possible. As more transistors were included in microprocessors, computers became faster and less expensive.