The Impact of Computers On Our Lives :: Technology Society Computer Essays Papers

The Impact of Computers On Our LivesOnly once in a lifetime will a untried invention happen about to touch every aspect of our lives. Such a finesse that changes the way we work, live, and play is a special one, indeed. A machine that has done every this and more now exists in nearly every business in the US and one out of every two households (Hall, 156). This incredible invention is the reckoner. The electronic computer has been around for over a half-century, but its ancestors have been around for 2000 years. However, only in the last 40 years has it changed the American society. From the first wooden abacus to the latest high-speed microprocessor, the computer has changed nearly every aspect of peoples lives for the better. The very earliest existence of the modern day computers ancestor is the abacus. These date back to almost 2000 years ago. It is simply a wooden rack holding parallel wires on which bead are strung. When these beads are moved along the wire according to p rogramming rules that the user must memorize, all ordinary arithmetic operations can be performed (Soma, 14). The adjoining innovation in computers took place in 1694 when Blaise Pascal invented the first digital calculating machine. It could only add numbers and they had to be entered by round dials. It was designed to help Pascals father who was a tax collector (Soma, 32). In the early 1800s, a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage designed an automatic calculation machine. It was steam powered and could store up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Built in to his machine were operations that included everything a modern general-purpose computer would need. It was programmed by--and stored data on--cards with holes punched in them, appropriately called punchcards. His inventions were failures for the most part because of the lack of precision machining techniques used at the time and the lack of demand for such a device (Soma, 46). After Babbage, people began to lose interest in com puters. However, between 1850 and 1900 there were great advances in mathematics and physics that began to rekindle the interest (Osborne, 45). Many of these new advances involved complex calculations and formulas that were very time consuming for human calculation. The first major use for a computer in the US was during the 1890 census. Two men, Herman Hollerith and pack Powers, developed a new punched-card system that could automatically read information on cards without human intervention (Gulliver, 82).