A computer is a programmable device for processing, storing, and displaying information. Learn more in this article about modern digital electronic computers and their design, constituent parts, and applications as well as about the history of computing.
Information system, an integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing data and for providing information and digital products. Many major companies are built entirely around information systems. Learn more about information systems in this article.
Computer security has become increasingly important since the late 1960s, when modems (devices that allow computers to communicate over telephone lines) were introduced.
Artificial intelligence is the ability of a computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks that are commonly associated with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason.
Microsoft Windows is a computer operating system (OS) developed by Microsoft Corporation to run personal computers (PCs). Featuring the first graphical user interface for IBM-compatible PCs, Microsoft Windows soon dominated the PC market.
It is not too great a stretch to say that, in the Jacquard loom, programming was invented before the computer. The close relationship between the device and the program became apparent some 20 years later, with Charles Babbage’s invention of the first computer.
In 1969 a team led by computer scientists Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created the first version of UNIX on a PDP-7 minicomputer, which was chosen mainly because of Thompson’s familiarity with the system from his hobby work on it.
Computer software is divided into two basic types—the operating system and application software. The operating system controls how the different parts of hardware work together. Application software gives the computer instructions for doing specific tasks, such as word processing or playing games.
Computer architecture, structure of a digital computer, encompassing the design and layout of its instruction set and storage registers. The architecture of a computer is chosen with regard to the types of programs that will be run on it (business, scientific, general-purpose, etc.).
