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JunWhat is the main reason for inventing a computer?
At the time when computers were not there, people did use to do a lot of things by themselves, given they had enough time, which included calculations. apart from everyday mathematics, they used to calculate a more advanced type of arithmetic and algorithm, which is almost impossible for 99% of computer users today.
the inventor of the computers (and my greatest inspiration) Charles Babbage must have realized the idea of solving them much faster than ever before(as for them it might have been used as a calculator), so there comes our first-generation computer, which had no mouse any screen and no keyboard. So what did it have?
the answer was vacuum tubes
which contained large data banks and vacuum tubes.
the CPU, almost the size of a room at that time used to give answers in a fraction of a second.
but the thinkers never stop, they thought that the sole purpose of a computer is not only to compute but to make the tasks of a user much simpler.
so the GUI was invented to ease the use of computers (using first-generation computers was hard).
then finally comes our 4th generation computers, the simplest and fastest of all generations based on GUI are a boon to our world, and we dare not do anything without consulting from our assistant.
Hence, we know computers were built for computing but a better definition would be to convert complex calculations to simpler answers.
Charles Babbage got the idea for the Difference Engine in the 1820s when he was verifying mathematical tables and decided that was the job for a steam engine. He built a small prototype. Search for the two working models of his final design. It is quite fascinating. The Difference engine is a special purpose computer for polynomial interpolation.
He got the idea and made several designs for a general-purpose numeric computer called the Analytic Engine that was never built.
The ideas that led to modern computers were triggered by the mathematical work of Alan Turing and his invention of the universal machine that could simulate any other machine of that type, in particular itself. The idea was taken up by John Von Neumann who got the idea of programs and data sharing the computer’s memory. This was the basis of all modern computers. At the time several teams were building computers, used for ballistic calculations for the long-range and anti-aircraft guns being developed in WW II. The famous Colossus was not quite a general-purpose computer, is specifically designed to break the German Enigma code in near real-time.
