A brief history of the Computer

The history of computers began with primitive designs in the 19^th century but changed the world during the 20^th century.

At first, mechanical calculating machines were designed and built to solve complex numerical calculations.

The inventor of the first automatic digital computer was Charles Babbage.

The first computer was the giant ENIAC (Electrical, Numerical, Integrator, and Calculator) which was built between 1943 and 1945. ENIAC was a project of the University of Pennsylvania that spanned many rooms and used nearly 20.000 vacuum tubes.

Early in the 50’s, there were two important engineering discoveries: the magnetic core memory and the Transistor Circuit Elements (1947). Then, the integrated circuit in 1958, and the microprocessor in 1971 allowed computers to be much smaller and fasters.

The word wild web came online in 1989. The 1990s was the booming decade for computer history. IBM produced the first smartphone in 1992 and the first smartwatch was released in 1998. 

Nowadays, we use desktop and laptop computers at home, at work, and for play, and depend on servers and the Internet for a multitude of reasons. This wide interconnection of computers has expanded our resources, allowing us instant access to almost any recorded information.