Explanation:
Understanding the history of computers means understanding several important aspects that have been incorporated into our current life, our ways of working, communicating, shopping, etc. It is a way of understanding how technology has revolutionized and made life easier for the whole society.
The history of computing makes it possible to understand the developments of devices that are simple to calculate, even the technological advances that made the creation of modern computers possible.
Mechanical computers (1642-1945) were the first devices created to aid calculation, such as Pascaline, the first mechanical calculator developed in the world.
The first electromechanical computer, the Mark I, which was built in 1944, was 17 meters long by 2.5 meters high and had a mass of 5 tons. It performed calculations without human intervention but it took about 3 to 5 seconds to perform a multiplication.
The first electronic computer was the ENIAC, inaugurated on February 14, 1946. This computer was a thousand times faster than any previous computer and solved up to 5 thousand calculations of addition and subtraction, 350 multiplications or 50 divisions per second. It was a huge computer that weighed 27 tons and measured 5.50 x 24.40 m and consumed 150 kW. This computer was developed in the second world war, and its main objective was to perform ballistic calculations. Its "operating system" was through punched cards.
