A computer is an arithmetic device with which mechanical, electrical or electronic arithmetic operations can be performed. Today they are a component in the most different areas of life. Often they are not even noticed, because they are included, among other things, in medical devices, vending machines of all kinds and in consumer electronics. They were originally intended only for solving complex computing tasks, but today their performance goes far beyond that.
The word “computer” has its origins in the English or Latin language. This is because “to compute” or “computare” both mean “to add up”.
Computer was even once a job title for calculation specialists who could demonstrate knowledge in all sub-areas of mathematics.
The first mechanical calculating machine was invented by Konrad Zuse in 1938. In 1946, the term computer was then used in th
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is context for the first time.
The history of the computer can be traced far back in time. In principle, a device that was developed more than 1000 years before Christ can already be called a computer. With his “four-species machine” in the 17th century, Wilhelm Schickard is considered the father of “the computer era”. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who developed the binary number system in 1673, also went down in history with it and thus formed the basis for the emergence of today’s digital computers. The 19th and 20th centuries, with the Industrial Revolution and World War I and World War II, were similarly crucial for the further development of the personal computer. In the 1970s, numerous companies increasingly pushed the development of home computers, as did the discovery of the possibilities of the World Wide Web.
Today’s computers are built on CPU cores – unlike the tube-based devices of the time – and can solve the most complicated computing tasks in the shortest possible time. They are divided into desktop PCs, portable PCs, laptops, notebooks, netbooks and tablet PCs and so-called handhelds.
