It was not until the mid-20th century that the word acquired its modern definition; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known use of the word computer was in a different … See more

Computers can be classified in a number of different ways, including:
By architecture
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The term hardware covers all of those parts of a computer that are tangible physical objects. Circuits, computer chips, graphic cards, sound … See more

Software refers to parts of the computer which do not have a material form, such as programs, data, protocols, etc. Software is that part of a computer system that consists of … See more

A computer does not need to be electronic, nor even have a processor, nor RAM, nor even a hard disk. While popular usage of the word "computer" is synonymous with a personal electronic … See more

Pre-20th century
Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one-to-one correspondence with See more

Computers have been used to coordinate information between multiple locations since the 1950s. The U.S. military's SAGE system was the first large-scale example of such a system, … See more