Computers were made to make our works easier. It can also be a "stress RELIEVER" or an entertainment machine. Today, there are lots of things that we can do together with the use of computers. We can listen to music, chat with long distance friends, upload pictures, download videos, send and receive files, and many more. We can never deny that computers had taken a long road of innovations and improvements. We can say that humans are the earliest computers. As we studied the history of computer back in my high school year, women in the society were the ones who compute or let’s say that computing is their job. They have this “computing table” where they can perform all the computing stuff. Later on there came the ABACUS it originated from Babylon. They say that abacus came from china but that was the misconception, because Babylonians were the first people who used the abacus. There are lots of inventions after abacus but let us jumped to the PROPOSED “Difference Engine” by the Father of Modern Computer, Charles Babbage. This project of Babbage was too big and it was very difficult to make. It became the most expensive project funded by the government. This project was never finished until Babbage think of another invention which he called Analytic Engine this machine was very big that it can be as big as a house. Because of this invention Ada Byron, a young lady, became the first programmer. She was fascinated by Babbage’s works. Babbage kept this invention secret for 30 years but Ada Byron still jot down notes for the instructions of Analytic Engine. After this invention the Hollerith Desk came to life, it was a developed version of punched cards by Jacquard. This invention was used in the 1890 U.S Census. Many years had passed; Herman Hollerith built a company which he named later on as IBM (International Business Machines). IBM still continues to make computers. At present we are now in the 4th generation (I should say 4th computer generation). We studied all this during my senior year with our T.L.E class. The 1st generation was the Vacuum Tubes. I remember our teacher said that one computer was as big as our classroom. Vacuum Tubes have no air in it thus it allows the electrons to move. After Vacuum Tubes, it has been replaced by Transistor (not the Transistor Radio guys :D). The keyword for transistor is “amplify”. It consists of semiconductors that amplify signals. Aside from this, transistors were far better than the vacuum tubes. It consumed less energy and occupied less space. Transistors were composed of vacuum tubes. The 3rd generation was the IC (Integrated Circuit) it consist billions of transistors. IC was smaller than the two. It cost less but performs well. The 4th generation was the microprocessor (Logic chip). From the word itself it’s small it is micro and it executes instructions. It consists of thousands of IC’s and it serves as the workstation in the computer. The last generation was the artificial intelligence (I haven’t heard this before but it sounds interesting) artificial means it was not natural. It was on the robot stuff side and as I searched for this interesting word I found out that IBM invented a super-computer named Deep Blue and it defeated the world chess champion Gary Kasparov in a chess match last May 1997.(see this link: http://www.techiwarehouse.com/engine/a046ee08/Generations-of-Computer). I wonder how far the computer technology will go. Maybe sooner or later computers will be smarter than humans. (But maybe not because we are the ones who were inventing them). But we can never tell, all we can do today is to enjoy the advantages that the technology gives us and should always acknowledge all the people behind this inventions :) God Bless
