Computers today. Гурьянова В.И. - 5 стр.

                                     Computers
      Computer is an electronic device that can receive a program and then
carry out this program by calculating numerical information.
      The modern world of high technology is possible mainly due to the de-
velopment of the computer. Computers have opened up a new era in manufac-
turing by means of automation, and they have enhanced modern communication
systems.
      Electronic computers have been around since the end of World War II.
Before that time, computers were people working in big insurance companies or
ballistic research laboratories performing long and tedious calculations. These
human computers used desk calculators to perform simple subtasks of addition
and multiplication, combining these subtasks into the computation of more
complex functions.
      During the war, new artillery weapons were developed at such a pace that
the human computers were falling far behind in computing the necessary firing
tables. As a result, the U.S. government was interested in supporting attempts to
construct “an automatic calculator”. Early machines such as Aiken’s Mark 1
used electromagnetic relay technology. The decisive step to a full-blown com-
puting machine was taken when the machines were made electronic, and with
the capability of storing programs in their memories. The electronic representa-
tion of data made it possible to change the contents of registers much faster than
in the mechanical machines. The idea of looking at computational procedures as
data and of storing programs in memory made it possible and easy to change the
function to be computed.
      Electronic computers were built to replace human computers. They were
designed as technical devices to be fed with numbers and computational proce-
dures. They could compute according to prescribed procedures and deliver the
computed results as output.


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