A Concise History of Computers, Robotics, Mechatronics and Information Technology
Georg Dummer · 2021
There is almost a 300 year gap between the invention of the first mechanical computer and the invention of the first electronic computer. A modern computer comprises two basic parts—the hardware and the software. All digital computers operate by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing numbers at incredibly high speeds. The architecture or arrangement of a basic computer consists of an input device to feed in the data, a device to hold temporary results until they are required, an arithmetic and logic unit to perform calculations, a memory to hold data and program as required, and an output device to display or print data. The use of the binary code greatly simplifies the design of electronic computers, for basic circuits having two states only: 0 and 1 can be used throughout. Because the computer operates in binary code, a programming language is necessary to convert words or instructions into suitable binary codes.