- Early electronic computers, developed around the
1940’s, were the size of a large room and consumed huge amounts of
electricity. They were vastly different to the modern computers we use
today, especially when compared to small and portable laptop computers.
- Computers are programmed to carry out instructions.
These instructions are usually very simple and require adding numbers
together, moving data from one place to another etc.
- A computer program can include as little as a few
instructions to upwards of millions of instructions depending on the
complexity of the program. Modern applications such as word processors,
web browsers and graphic editors take large teams of programmers a long
time to complete.
- A computer’s memory stores numbers in huge amounts of
cells that are addressed and can be quickly accessed by the CPU to perform
calculations. There are two main types of computer memory, ROM (read only
memory) and RAM (random access memory). ROM contains pre-written software
and data that the CPU can only read, while RAM can be accessed and written
to at any time.
- Computers interact with a number of different I/O
(input/output) devices to exchange information. These peripheral devices
include the keyboard, mouse, display, hard drive, printer and more.
- Computers are used to help link the world in the form
of networks. Networked computers allow users to share and exchange data
that is stored in different locations. You may have heard of a local area
network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) which connects areas of various
sizes. The Internet is a vast network of computers spanning the globe that
allows users to access email, the World Wide Web and other applications.
Although we normally think of computers as the
ones we use in our everyday lives to surf the web, write documents etc, small
computers are also embedded into other things such as mobile phones, toys,
microwaves and MP3 players. We use computers all the time, often without even
knowing it!