CD

A compact disc is a small, portable, round medium for electronically recording, storing, and playing back audio, video, text, and other information in digital form.

Tape

In computers, tape is an external storage medium usually both readable and writable, can store data in the form of electromagnetic charges that can be read and also erased.

Floppy disk

A diskette is a random access, removable data storage medium that can be used with personal copters. The term usually refers to the magnetic medium housed in a rigid plastic cartridge measuring 3.5 inches square and about 2 millimeters thick.

Hard Disk

Hard disk is a computer sotrage device which saves and retrieves the data when required. Its capacity is much greater that the computer memory (RAM,ROM) Data on hard disk is stored and retrieved from electromagnetically charged surface.

ROM

ROM is built in computer memory containing data that normally can only be read, not written to ROM contains the programming that allows your computer to be booted up or regenerated each time you turn it on.

Punch Cards

A card on which data can be recorded in the form of punched holes.

RAM

RAM (Random access memory) is the place in a computer where the operating system, application programs, and data in current use are kept so that they can be quickly reached by the computer's processor. RAM is much faster to read from tand write to that the other kinds of storage in a computer the hard disk, floppy disk, and CD-ROM

Memory / Storage

There are many types of Memory / Storage

RAM
Punch Cards
ROM
Hard Disk
Floppy Disk
Tape
CD
DVD

Processor

There are many type of processors

Pentium
Celeron
Athlon
PowerPC
Strong ARM (PDA)
Crusoe (Laptops)
SPARC(Workstations)

What is Port?

On computer and telecommunication devices a port is generally a specific place for being physically connected to some other device, usually with a socket and plug of some kind. Typically a personal computer is provided with one or more serial ports and usually one parallel port.

Scanner

A Scanner is a device that captures images from photographic prints, posters, magazine pages, and similar sources for computer editing and display. Scanner come in hand held feed in and flatbed types and for scanning black and white only, or color.

Microphone

A device that converts sound waves into audio signals. These could be used for sound recording as well as voice chatting through internet.

Digital Camera

A Digital camera records and stores photographic images in digital form that can be fed to a computer as the impressions are recorded or stored in the camera for later loading into a computer or printer. currently, Kodak, Canon and several other companies make digital cameras.

Joystick

In Computers, a joystick is a cursor control device used in computers games. The joystick, which got its name from the control stick used by a pilot to control the ailerons and elevators of a airplane, is a hand-held lever that pivots on one end and transmits its coordinates to a computer.

Keyboard

On most computers, a keyboard is the primary text input device. A keyboard on a computer is almost identical to a keyboard on a typewriter. Computer keyboards will typically have extra keys, however. Some of these keys are meant to be used in conjunction with other keys just like shift on a regular typewriter.

Mouse

A mouse is a small device that a computer user pushes across a desk surface in order to point to a place on a display screen and to select one or more actions to take from that position.

Input Devices

There are many input devices.

Mouse
Keyboard
Joystick
Digital Camera
Microphone
Scanner

Hardware Components

All the computers have the following hardware components

Input
The devices used to give the computer data or commands are called input devices. like keyboard, mouse scanner etc.

Processor

A processor is the logic circuitry that responds to and processes the basic instructions that drive a computer. The  term processor has generally replaced the term central processing unit (CPU).

Memory

Memory is the Electronic holding place for instructions and data that your computer's microprocessor can reach quickly. When your computer is in normal operation, its memory usually contains the main parts of the operating system and some or all of the application programs and related data that are being used.

Storage

Computer Storage is the holding of data in an electromagnetic form for access by a computer processor. It is also called secondary storage. In secondary storage data resides on hard disks. tapes, and other external devices.

Computer Types

There are many types according to capability.

Supercomputers
A Supercomputer is a computer that performs at or near the currently highest operational rate for computer.A Supercomputer is typically used for scientific and engineering applications that must handle very large databases or do a great amount of computation.At any given time, there are usually a few well publicized supercomputers that operate at very latest and always incredible speeds.

Mainframe Computers

A Very large and expensive computer capable of supporting hundreds, or even thousands, of users simultaneously, in the hierarchy that stars with a simple microprocessor at the bottom and moves to supercomputers at the top, mainframe are just below supercomputers.

Servers / Mainframe Computers

A mid sized computer, In size and power, minicomputers lie between workstations and mainframes.

In the past decade, the distinction between large minicomputers and small mainframes has blurred however, as has the distinction between small minicomputers and workstations.

Desktops

There are also called microcomputers. Low-end desktops are called PC's and high-end one Workstations. There are generally consisting of a single processor only, some times 2, along with MB's of memory, and GB's of storage.

Portables

Portable computer is a personal computer that is designed to be easily transported and relocated, but it is larger and less convenient to transport than a notebook computer. The earliest PC's designed for easy transport were called portables.

World Wide Web

Browser
A browser is an application program that provides a way to look at and interact with all the information on the world wide web. The world browser seems to have originated prior to the web as a generic term for user interfaces that let you browse test files online. By the time the first web browser with graphical user interface was generally available Mosaic, in 1993 the term seemed to apply to web content too.

URL

URL ( Uniform Resource Locator , previously Universal Resource Locator)- pronounced YU-AHR-EHL or in some quarters, UHRL is the address of a file(resource) accessible on the internet. The type of file or resource depends on the internet application protocol.

What is Web Site?

A Web site is a related collection of world wide web files that includes a beginning file called a home page.A company or an individual tells you how to get to their Web site by giving you the address of their home page. From the home page, you can get to all other pages on their site.

Who Invented the Web & Why?

CERN is a meeting place for physicists from all over the world, who collaborate on  complex physics, engineering and information handling projects, Thus, the need for the WWW system arose from the geographical dispersion of large collaborations, and the fast turnover the fellows,students and visiting scientists, Who had to get up the speed on projects and leave a lasting contribution before leaving.

Evolution of Computing

Turning Machine - 1936
Introduced by Alan Turing in 1936, Turing machines are one of the key abstractions used in modem computability theory, the study of what computers can and cannot do.A Turing machine is a particularly simple kind of computer, one whose operations are limited to reading and writing symbols on a tape, or moving alone the tape to the left or right. The tape is marked off into squares, each of which can be filled with at most one symbol.

Vacuum Tube - 1904

Vacuum Tube is just that a glass tube surrounding a vacuum ( an area from which all gases has been removed). What makes it interesting is that when electrical contacts are put on the ends you can get current to flow though that vacuum. A British scientist named Jhon A Fleming made a vacuum tube known today as diode.

ABC - 1939

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first electronic digital computer. It was built by Jhon Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Lowa State University During 1937-42. It incorporated several major innovations in computing including the use of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions.

Introduction

Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
Creator of the Analytical Engine- the first general-purpose digital computer (1833) The Analytical Engine was not built until 1943 ( in the form of the Harvard Mark I)

The Analytical Engine

A Programmable, mechanical, digital machine Could carryout any calculation could make decisions based upon the results of the previous calculation components: Input, memory, processor, output.

Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-52)

Babbage: the father of computing

Ada: the mother

Wrote a program for computing the Bernoulli's sequence on the Analytical Engine world's 1st computer program

Ada:  A programming language specifically designed by the Us Dept of Defense for developing military applications was named Ada to honor her contributions towards computing.