computer
- Key People:
- Alan Turing
- Danny Hillis
- Douglas Engelbart
- Yves Béhar
- Son Masayoshi
What is a computer?
Who invented the computer?
What is the most powerful computer in the world?
How do programming languages work?
What can computers do?
Are computers conscious?
What is the impact of computer artificial intelligence (AI) on society?
computer, device for processing, storing, and displaying information. Computer once meant a person who did computations, but now the term almost universally refers to automated electronic machinery. The first section of this article focuses on modern digital electronic computers and their design, constituent parts, and applications. The second section covers the history of computing. For details on computer architecture, software, and theory, see computer science. The first computers were used primarily for numerical calculations. However, as any information can be numerically encoded, people soon realized that computers are capable of general-purpose information processing. Their capacity to handle large amounts of ...(100 of 31391 words)