Article on computer

Computer

Jump to navigationSweep to search  Must not be confused with Computer Device or Information Processing System.A computer is a programmable information processing system as defined by Turing and which operates by sequentially reading a set of instructions, organized in programs, which make it perform logical and arithmetic operations. Its current physical structure makes all operations based on binary logic and numbers formed from binary digits. As soon as it is turned on, a computer executes, one after the other, instructions that cause it to read, manipulate, and then rewrite a set of data determined by a boot ROM. Tests and conditional jumps allow to proceed to the next instruction and thus to act differently according to the data or necessities of the moment or the environment.

The data to be manipulated are obtained either by reading memories or by reading information coming from internal or external peripherals (moving a mouse, key pressed on a keyboard, temperature, speed, compression, etc.). Once used, or manipulated, the results are written either in memories or in components that can transform a binary value into a physical action (writing to a printer or monitor, accelerating or braking a vehicle, changing temperature of an oven ...). The computer can also respond to interrupts that allow it to execute response programs specific to each, and resume the sequential execution of the interrupted program.

From 1834 to 1837, Charles Babbage designed a programmable calculating machine by associating one of the descendants of Pascaline (the first mechanical calculating machine invented by Blaise Pascal) with instructions written on the same type of perforated cards as those invented by Jacquard for his looms1. It was during this period that he imagined most of the features of the modern computer. Babbage will spend the rest of his life trying to build his analytic machine, but without success. Many people became interested and tried to develop this machine, but it was a hundred years later, in 1937, that IBM inaugurated the computer age by starting the development of the ASCC / Mark I, a machine based on Babbage's architecture which, once achieved, will be considered the completion of his dream4.

The current technology of computers dates from the middle of the twentieth century. Computers can be classified according to several criteria5 such as scope, size or architecture.