Computer is an important element of digital World. What is a computer? A computer is any device capable of performing computations (making calculations)--it performs a computation and produces an answer. That includes an abacus. But this is a little too simple and too broad to describe most computers today. Today's computers can perform very complex calculations at extremely high speeds using silicon-based semi-conductor technologies and a collection of storage, processing, presentation and user interface components to make it produce input and output in a format computer users can interpret.
"Who invented the computer?" is not a question with a simple answer. The real answer is that many inventors contributed to the history of computers and that a computer is a complex piece of machinery made up of many parts, each of which can be considered a separate invention.This series covers many of the major milestones in computer history (but not all of them) with a concentration on the history of personal home computers.
Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) was a construction engineer for the Henschel Aircraft Company in Berlin, Germany at the beginning of WWII. Konrad Zuse earned the semiofficial title of "inventor of the modern computer" for his series of automatic calculators, which he invented to help him with his lengthy engineering calculations. Zuse has modestly dismissed the title while praising many of the inventions of his contemporaries and successors as being equally if not more important than his own.One of the most difficult aspects of doing a large calculation with either a slide rule or a mechanical adding machine is keeping track of all intermediate results and using them, in their proper place, in later steps of the calculation. Konrad Zuse wanted to overcome that difficulty. He realized that an automatic-calculator device would require three basic elements: a control, a memory, and a calculator for the arithmetic.That said, the fact that "everyone agrees about most everything" isn't always such a good thing. Divergent opinions and voices are important, if only to help us reconsider why we believe what we believe. (They are also important because they might actually be right, of course, and all of the rest of us wrong, but that's another matter!) Even where there is an emerging consensus among leading thinkers and practitioners about what is critically important, this doesn't mean that what is actually being done reflects this consensus -- or indeed, that this consensus 'expert' opinion is relevant in all contexts.
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