Computing
A common misconception about computers is that they are smarter than humans. Actually, the degree of a computer¹s intelligence depends on the speed of its ignorance. Today¹s complex computers are not really intelligent at all. The intelligence is in the people who design them. Therefore, in order to understand the intelligence of computers, one must first look at the history of computers, the way computers handle information, and, finally, the methods of programming the machines.
The predecessor to today¹s computers was nothing like the machines we use today. The first known computer was Charles Babbage¹s Analytical Engine; designed in 1834. (Constable 9) It was a remarkable device for its ...
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today¹s chip computers, the first computers were non-programmable, electromechnical machines. No one would ever confuse the limited power of those early machines with the wonder of the human brain. An example was the ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It was a huge, room-sized machine, designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the military. (Constable 9) ENIAC was built with more than 19,000 vacuum tubes, nine times the amount ever used prior to this. The internal memory of ENIAC was a paltry twenty decimal numbers of ten digits each. (Constable 12) (Today¹s average home computer can hold roughly 20,480 times this amount.)
Today, the chip-based computer easily packs the power of more than 10,000 ENIACs into a silicon chip the size of an infant¹s fingertip. (Reid 64) The chip itself was invented by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce in 1958, but their crude devices looked nothing like the sleek, paper-thin devices common now. (Reid 66) The first integrated ...
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at least one button on it, and a small tracking ball at the bottom. When the mouse is slid across a surface, the ball tracks the movement on the screen and sends the information to the computer. (Tessler 155) A pressure-sensitive tablet is mainly used by graphic artists to easily draw with the computer. The artist uses a special pen to draw on the large tablet, and the tablet sends the data to the computer.
Once the data is entered into the computer, it does no good until the computer can process it. This is accomplished by the millions of transistors compressed into the thumb-nail sized chip in the computer. These transistors are not at all randomly placed; they form a sequence, and ...
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Computing. (2006, January 7). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Computing/39249
"Computing." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 7 Jan. 2006. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Computing/39249>
"Computing." Essayworld.com. January 7, 2006. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Computing/39249.
"Computing." Essayworld.com. January 7, 2006. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Computing/39249.
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