computer
5 How a Computer Works/Computing History
Optical Drive
Optical Drive
In computing, an optical disc drive is a disk drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs.
CPU
CPU
Computer can have more than one CPU; this is called multiprocessing. All modern CPUs are microprocessors, meaning contained on a single chip. Some integrated circuits (ICs) can contain multiple CPUs on a single chip; those ICs are called multi-core processors.
RAM
RAM
Is a form of computer data storage. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read and written in roughly the same amount of time regardless of the order in which data items are accessed. In contrast, with other direct-access data storage media such as hard disks, CD-RWs, DVD-RWs and the older drum memory, the time required to read and write data items varies significantly depending on their physical locations on the recording medium, due to mechanical limitations such as media rotation speeds and arm movement delays.
Motherboard
Motherboard
A motherboard is one of the most essential parts of a computer system. It holds together many of the crucial components of a computer, including the central processing unit (CPU), memory and connectors for input and output devices.
Inputs/outputs
Inputs/outputs
The term can also be used as part of an action; to "perform I/O" is to perform an input or output operation. I/O devices are used by a human (or other system) to communicate with a computer. For instance, a keyboard or mouse is an input device for a computer, while monitors and printers are output devices.
Operating Systems / Other software
Operating Systems / Other software
oftware designed to handle basic elements of computer operation, such as sending instructions to hardware devices like disk drives and computer screens, and allocating system resources such as memory to different software applications being run.
Tim Berners-Lee – Research
Tim Berners-Lee – Research
The World Wide Web (abbreviated as WWW or W3, commonly known as the Web) is a system of interlinked hypertext documents that are accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them via hyperlinks.Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist and former CERN employee, is considered the inventor of the Web. On March 12, 1989, he wrote a proposal for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. The 1989 proposal was meant for a more effective CERN communication system but Berners-Lee eventually realised the concept could be implemented throughout the world. Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use hypertext "to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will",and Berners-Lee finished the first website in December of that year The first test was completed around 20 December 1990 and Berners-Lee reported about the project on the newsgroup alt.hypertext on 7 August 1991
Alan Turing
Alan Turing
A Turing machine is a hypothetical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a computer.The "Turing" machine was invented in 1936 by Alan Turing who called it an "a-machine" (automatic machine). The Turing machine is not intended as practical computing technology, but rather as a hypothetical device representing a computing machine. Turing machines help computer scientists understand the limits of mechanical computation.
The four generations of computers
The four generations of computers
Each of the five generations of computers is characterized by a major technological development that fundamentally changed the way computers operate.The history of computer development is often referred to in reference to the different generations of computing devices. Each of the five generations of computers is characterized by a major technological development that fundamentally changed the way computers operate, resulting in increasingly smaller, cheaper, more powerful and more efficient and reliable computing devices.