INTRODUCTION Since prehistoric times people have created tools in order to save energy and perform work faster Computers are sophisticated tools With these machines users can instantly communicate across the globe and learn new skills create diverse com munities process astronomical data get news and weather and buy and sell goods But computers are a recent addition to our history The reason for the evolution of computers is that people wanted to work faster and more effectively A common way of getting more work done is add ing more people to a job yet computers can replace the need for additional workers In addition there are certain things that computers do much better than humans Yet the human brain is capable of various higher-order thought processes like empathy cre ativity and lateral thinking that are difficult to repli cate in a computer The push toward digital computing happened after thousands of years of mathematical advances Math is an ancient field that people have attempted to make easier or faster by inventing various tools But prior to the advent of computers those tools required a great deal of manual labor for a limited output 4
Workers in an electronics factory on Penang Island Malaysia Many historical circumstances outside of com mercial developments made computers into an essential tool World War II 1939 1945 raised the question of how to use math to collect information that would gain an advantage over an opponent In that conflict the British-led spy effort involved translating coded German messages into intelligi ble language Afterward during the Cold War and the space race the United States ability to com 5 5
The Evolution of Computer Technology pete in space flight came to the forefront of the world’s attention In the time following the space race up until recent years computers have become immensely smaller but much more efficient Questions for the future concern whether computers and artificial intel ligence will replace humans by learning to outdo us in every task And there are also security con cerns about computers becoming more centered in the lives of users Perhaps the lessons of the past can help us determine how to compute the future 6
Chapter 1 EARLY COMPUTERS The computer came from humble beginnings However its precursors were monumentally im portant These were the first devices created to store and process large amounts of data They aided us with scientific and mathematical calculations though they were accessible only to an elite few IT BEGAN WITH CALCULATORS The very earliest calculator is the humble abacus The abacus is a system of strings and moving beads that allowed humans to perform bigger calculations than we can with ten fingers It originated in Babylo nia modern-day Iraq about 500 BCE Information is stored on an abacus by setting the beads in cer tain formations Storing information allows the user 7
