the.com/computer
a rock we tricked into thinking by zapping it with lightning in tiny patterns
means An electronic machine that stores, processes, and outputs information by following instructions, performing calculations and tasks at superhuman speed.
from From the Latin 'computare,' to count or reckon together (com- 'with' + putare 'to settle, reckon'). For centuries a 'computer' was a person — usually a clerk or, by the 19th and early 20th centuries, often a woman — paid to do arithmetic by hand. The job became the machine: when the great calculating engines arrived, the word slid from the human who computed to the device that did, leaving us with a noun that once wore shoes.
- original meaning
- once a job title for humans doing math
- made of sand
- chips are purified silicon, basically refined beach
- speed
- modern CPUs do billions of operations per second
- first bug
- a literal moth jammed in a 1947 relay
- binary heart
- everything reduces to on-or-off, ones and zeros
eniac — first general-purpose electronic computer, built at university of pennsylvania in 1946
apple ii — first mass-produced personal computer, released by apple in 1977
deep blue — ibm chess computer that defeated garry kasparov in 1997