Computer Origins
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ou can probably use a computer. In fact, you probably use one every day and you might be reading this on one! But can you say what a computer’s basic function is? Well, a computer takes input from the user and produces output. This means you tell the computer what to do by giving it commands, and the computer does it. The first computer wasn’t exactly a computer, as we know it. It helped to do calculations and was called an abacus. Nobody really knows who invented the abacus, but it was probably the Chinese during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).
Do you know what an abacus is? It’s a simple device that solves mathematical problems—it can do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Do you have one at school? The computer really began in 1833 with a man named Charles Babbage. He never made a computer, but his Analytical Engine used a lot of the parts that modern computers use, such as a memory and a processor. It wasn’t until many years later that the first computer was actually made.
Numbers from Babbage’s Analytical Engine
76 Computer Crazy!
COMICparte2-N5.indd 76
4/10/17 1:36 PM