Development of Computers and the impacts on society through the time - Essay Example

Many use computers to search for information, read, send or receive emails, or even pay bills among others (Morley and Charles 53). Computers have influenced the quality and structure of work and some people believe that they have significantly contributed to the emergence of post-industrial society (Edwards 13). This paper focuses on the development of computers and how they have affected individuals’ lives and activities and the society as a whole. The word computer was first used in 1613 to describe a human who performed calculations and this definition remained the same until the end of 19th C when individuals began to realize that machines perform calculations faster and more accurately as compared to humans.

The first electronic digital computer introduced in 1950’s used vacuum tubes, followed by the computers that used transistors (Jain 1). Notably, the first computing machine was created by British mathematician, Charles Babbage in 1882 and his great inventions made him to known as the father of the computer. He suggested and started developing the Difference Engine which is believed to be the first automatic computing engine that was able to compute various sets of numbers and producing hard copies of the results.

Actually, his idea was not really to create what we refer to as computers but to create a machine that would compute mathematical problems. Babbage was fed up with human errors in computing math problems and so he was focused to come up with an infallible math machine. Later on, he proposed the first general mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine, which became the first machine that resembles today’s modern computers. It could keep data safely and had some features used in today’s computer language.

Moreover, basic concepts of the stored program computer were developed during this period (Hyman 164). The Analytical Engine comprised