Computing Notes for Week 1 Teacher: Mr. R. Stewart Braswell

Topic: A Short History of Computing

Students are to get a brief overview of the history of commercial computing and understand the role of computers in the world today. After this lesson, students should know the following:

  1. Computers have been developed relatively recently.
  2. Computers become faster, more reliable, and cheaper every year.
  3. Computers are being used widely in business and education.

Computers are able to calculate and store the results of their calculations.

Computers do an incredible amount of work quickly and reliably.

The entire history of commercial computers is only 30 or 40 years old.

In the 1960’s, a commercial computer took up a full room. Today, it fits into a small box.

The first personal computers (PCs) were launched in 1979 with a clock speed of about five megahertz (MHz). Today, computers have one gigahertz (GHz) or higher clock speed. It’s two hundred times as fast. The storage capacity has also greatly increased.

Every year, computers are becoming smaller, faster, cheaper, more reliable, and easier to use.

Computers are machines, tools. They are designed by people to meet people’s needs.

Vocabulary: Screen (monitor, VDU), System unit (CPU), Loudspeakers, Keyboard, Mouse

The computer is the latest in a long line of tools used to perform calculations and store the results. As they have developed, they have become faster, more reliable, and capable of storing more information. These developments have enabled them to be applied in many areas of commercial life, administration, education, and entertainment.

Topic: What exactly is a computer?

Students should be able to distinguish a computer from other machines. Students should know about the different types of computer in use today. After this lesson, students should know the following:

  1. What a computer is.
  2. The difference between hardware and software.
  3. The various categories of computers.

Vocabulary: Hardware, Software, PC, Mainframe, Dumb terminal, Intelligent terminal

Computers can be used for almost anything. Computers are general-purpose machines. The same machine can be operated over a few hours as a typewriter, desktop publishing studio, sound editor, video editor, accounts tracker, e-mail sender, Internet browser, and so on.

Computers respond to a set of instructions. These instructions are called programs. Programs are written to make computers behave in specific ways: to act as word processors or to control electricity generating stations. Computers are programmable.

Computers can calculate, and they can store the results of their calculations.

Computer: A computer is a general-purpose, programmable device that is capable of calculating and storing results.

A computer is like a “black box” that accepts input on one side, processes it in some way, and then produces output on the other side. INPUT  PROCESSING  OUTPUT

Examples of Input: mathematical problem, supplier invoices for a month, a search for a good restaurant in Dubai, temperature of a furnace

Examples of Output: the answer to the mathematical problem, the cheques to pay the invoices, the name and address of the restaurant, or the instructions to shut the control valves of the fuel supply

What happens inside the black box is called processing: the manipulation of the input necessary to produce the output.

Everything going into a computer is first converted into numbers, and all forms of output (text on the page, graphics on the screen, music, and telephone conversations) have to be converted into their final form from numbers. Inside the black box, a program gives a set of rules for the numbers to be added together in various ways and combinations.

Hardware includes all the physical things that you can touch, feel, and weigh.

Software is the intangible information component. It’s the instructions or programs that tell the hardware how to behave.

Mainframes are big, expensive machines, typically used by large corporations, government organizations, and scientific research establishments. They are expected to run continuously, 14 hours a day, 365 days a year. They are capable of processing huge numbers of transactions and performing extremely complex calculations.

The PC (personal computer), formerly known as the microcomputer is inexpensive to purchase.

Desktop computers are the most common. They generally include a system unit, a screen, and a keyboard, as separate components. Laptop or notebook computers are more portable. The screen is a flat liquid crystal display (LCD) which forms a lid hinged to cover the keyboard and system unit. Personal digital assistants (PDA) or palmtop computers bring together many of the functions of a PC in addition to organizer, calendar, diary, calculator, and mail and contacts programs in a pocket-sized package.

Minicomputers are between the mainframes and PCs in terms of size and function.

Network computers (network servers) are computers that administer, support, and protect the security of a computer network. Users on a network are able to use the resources (data, software, hardware) on the network server. In the past, such users mainly used dumb terminals (devices that simply accepted input from the user and displayed results). All the processing and storage was done by the server. Today, most users have intelligent terminals (PCs that have their own “local” processing and storage capacity.

Computer Hardware Vocabulary: Processor, Memory, Hard Disk, Floppy Disk, Keyboard, Screen, Mouse, Printer, Modem, Multimedia, CD-ROM, DVD