A computer is a machine that uses the principles of electronics to process data according to a series of instructions. Computer can be divided into two parts: software system and hardware system. The first computer was the ENIAC universal computer which was born in the University of Pennsylvania on February 5, 1946.
People call a computer without any software installed as bare metal. With the development of science and technology, some new computers are constantly emerging: biological computers, photonic computers, quantum computers and so on. 1954 On May 24th, the transistor electronic computer was born.
The types of input and output devices of the first generation computers were very limited. The usual input device is a card reader with punched cards, which is used to input instructions and data into the memory; The output device used to store the results is usually a magnetic tape. With the progress of science and technology, the richness of input and output equipment has been improved. Take a personal computer as an example: keyboard and mouse are the main tools for users to input information directly into the computer, while monitors, printers, speakers and headphones return the processing results. In addition, there are many input devices that can accept other different kinds of information, such as digital cameras that can input images.
Among the input and output devices, there are two types worthy of attention: the first type is secondary storage devices, such as hard disks, optical disks or other devices with slow speed but large capacity. The second is the computer network access equipment, through which the direct data transmission between computers greatly enhances the value of computers. Today, the Internet has enabled tens of millions of computers to transmit various types of data to each other.