A man comes home from work after solving complex mathematical equations. He then dreams of the day when there will be a machine that could solve complex calculations. The man decides to try building a machine out of electronic switches, binary and a few other parts. His machine worked and that man was the inventor of the modern computer. There is only one invention that has completely revolutionized almost every industry in the 20th and 21st centuries and that invention is the computer.
The inventor of the modern computer was John Vincent Atanasoff, who was a professor of physics at Iowa State University. “John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics at Iowa State University, after a frustrating day performing tedious mathematical calculations in his lab, hit on the idea that the binary number system and electronic switches, with an array of capacitors on a moving drum to serve as memory, could yield a computing machine that would make his life and the lives of other similarly burdened scientists easier.”(www.dl.acm.com) The man that invented the computer invented it to do tasks for him, and computers still do those same things today. John Vincent Atanasoff is not normally recognized as the inventor of the modern computer.” Why dont we know the name of John Atanasoff as well as we know those of Alan Turing and John von Neumann? Because he never patented the device, and because the developers of the far-better-known ENIAC almost certainly stole critical ideas from him.”(www.dl.acm.org) Because John Atanasoff did not patent the device he invented, other people were able to steal his ideas and therefore got credit for the invention. ENIAC (electronic, numerical integrator and calculator), an early computer built by the University of Pennsylvania for the U.S army to calculate artillery firing tables during WWII, normally gets the credit for inventing the modern computer.(www.encyclopedia.com) The inventor of the modern computer was John Vincent Atanasoff.
A computer is a very complicated machine with a lot of parts, and each part has a different function. The base that a computer is built off of is called a motherboard.
The motherboard typically has all the slots, ports, places to build off of and attach other parts.
One off the main parts of the computer is called the CPU, which is the processor, or brains of the computer. A computer needs to have software or be programmed in order to work because it can not do anything when it does not have anything to do. An example of software is Windows or OS X. A computer needs a pace to store the tremendous amount of information it handles. The place where a computer stores information is in a hard drive. There are many different types of hard drives including an SSD (solid state drive). “Sound and graphics cards are pretty self-explanatory. They give your computer the ability to display graphics or play sounds and music.”(www.how stuffworks.com). In order to produce the graphics that a computer uses it needs a graphics card. A computer needs many parts to work, and each part has a specific job to make the computer work.
Computers are usually made in a giant factory together with many other computers.
A computer factory usually orders all the parts from different factories that specialize in making a certain part. Computers are made with materials like ”gold, steel, silica sand, iron ore and bauxite”(howstuffworks.com). Each material that a computer is made out of has its own purpose. For example, microchips are made out of silicon.
Computers have impacted society by leading to many other inventions and making life much easier for humanity. Without computers we would not have inventions like smartphones, which have impacted society in many different ways, by allowing everybody to be connected to each other constantly through things like social media at any given time. Computers have many functions including but not limited to writing documents, surfing the web and for playing games and researching. The tools on computers have ”reshaped working in many areas like medicine, engineering, math, design and education among many others.”(Forbes.com) This means that computers have completely changed working in many areas.
Computers have evolved greatly over time in many different ways. Over time computers have gotten smaller and faster, in addition to getting better graphics, more memory and gotten easier to use. Computers have evolved so greatly that our smartphones which are not that powerful compared to most of our desktop and laptops, have the computing power of about 50 desktop computers from the 1990s.(www.Forbes.com) An IBM 1970 mainframe computer cost 4.6 million USD and ran at a speed of 12.5 MHz,which equals 0.0125 GHz.(www.aei.org) ”Compared to today’s desktops, mainframe computers were 128 times slower, more than 8,000 times as expensive, and were more than 1 million times as expensive in terms of cost per MHz.”(www.aei.org) Today computers run faster and the pricing has improved greatly. Two of the fastest processors today are the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX which has 32 cores, runs at the speed of 4.2 GHz and costs 1,700 USD and the Intel Core i9-7980 XE which has 18 cores, runs at the speed of 4.4 GHz and costs 2,000 USD.”The downside? The Core i9-7980XE costs $2,000. That's two iPhone Xs, just for a CPU, and that's before you've factored in all your other hardware including a potent cooler.”(www.Forbes.com) The processors just mentioned are incredibly fast but on the down side they are incredibly expensive. Computers have evolved greatly over time and have became better in many different areas.
Some people might say that computers have had an negative effect on society because they have caused people to become addicted to their smartphones and computers. Even though people might become addicted to their devices, humanity has still benefited greatly from computers in many different ways.
Computers have made life easier for humanity in many different ways. John Vincent Atanasoff invented the modern computer to solve complex equations for him. Computers have a lot of different parts and each part is essential for the computer to work. computers are made out of many different parts and materials, they are put together in giant factories and shipped to different stores. Computers have evolved in many different ways including size, computing power, functions, and better graphics. In conclusion, computers have helped the world in many different and are the best invention of the 20th century.