2.  Some consider the first computer to be the abacus which was invented by the Chinese around 3000B.C. to perform arithmetic processes.  In 1642, Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline, an arithmetic machine, in order to help his father, a tax collector.  In 1820, the first four-function calculating machines were created. By 1885, keyboards were being built with them for entering data.

3.  In 1890, Herman Hollerith completed the automatic tabulating machine that was used for the United State’s census.

4.  The Analytical Engine was the first fully- automatic calculating machine. Babbage first thought of the idea in 1834 to evaluate any mathematical formula.  Only part of the trial model machine was completed before Babbage died in 1871.

5.  Konrad Zuse developed a computer based around electromechanical relays. It was called the Z3 and was the first to use binary in place of decimals.  In 1937, Howard Aiken fabricated a programmable computer that was about 17 meters long and 2½ meters high. It was able to count 5 times faster than a human and was built using 3300 gears and 1400 switches linked with 800km of electrical wire. It was called the Mark I.  The Mark II debuted in 1947 with it’s predecessor’s gears replaced by electronic components.

7.  The main drawback of vacuum tube computers were that they were poor conductors and therefore used a great deal of electrical energy, which they released as heat. In 1946, this was solved with the creation of the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Computer). It could store programs in memory (about 1024 words in central memory and 20,000 words in magnetic memory.)

8.  The firm Bell Labs created the transistor with the help of engineers John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley in 1948. Transistors made 1950s computers less bulky, less energy-hungry, and in turn less expensive. It was a major turning point in the history of computers.

9.  Ed Roberts designed the first microcomputer in 1975. It was called the Altair 8800 and was produced by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS).

10.  The internet originally began as a computer network of ARPA in order to link computers at several universities and laboratories across America in 1973. It was developed by American computer scientist Vinton Cerf.  The World Wide Web came to be in 1989 by English computer scientist Timothy- Berners Lee for the European Organization of Nuclear Research.

11.  “Binary” simply means consisting of or involving two. The binary system is very essential to technology because electrical circuits can be in only one of two states, on or off. It is read from right to left and is made up of two digits, 1 and 0. Bit is simply short for binary digits. There are 8 bits in a byte. Bits must be grouped because if a device is being fed a continuous stream of bits, it wouldn’t be able to tell where one piece of information begins and one ends. The binary system is used in many ways from storing information on a CD to your computer interpreting what’s being typed on a keyboard.

12.  A “program” is the precise sequence of instructions enabling a computer to solve a problem.  “Debugging” a computer came about due to a moth getting lodged in the vacuum tubes of the Mark II while being tested at Harvard University around 1945. The moth was supposedly attracted to the heat that the vacuum tubes emitted.

13.  http://en.kioskea.net/contents/histoire/ordinateur. php3 http://en.kioskea.net/contents/histoire/ordinateur. php3  http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/comp uting_and_data_processing/1878-3.aspx http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/comp uting_and_data_processing/1878-3.aspx  http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/inter net.htm http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/inter net.htm  http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/binary1.ht ml http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/binary1.ht ml  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/program http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/program