1. The history of the computer Ethan 9/1/10

2. Who invented the internet Despite what he may have said, Al Gore did not invent the Internet. The Internet was invented in the United States during the late 1950s to the 1970s by a group of researchers and scientists at the newly formed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) after the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik. Realizing that the United States had suffered a great technological blow by allowing the USSR to hold the first successful satellite launch, ARPA set out to create a brand new technology unlike anything that had ever been done before; and the Internet was the result of their hard work.Although there were many people working for ARPA on the Internet project, there are five individuals who can really be credited with actually creating the Internet. Among them was J. C. R. Licklider, the head of the Information Processing Technology Office at ARPA. In his position, he thought up the idea of the Internet itself as a way of potentially unifying humans from around the United States (and the world) through a universal network.new technology unlike anything that had ever been done before; and the Internet was the result of their hard work.Although there were many people working for ARPA on the Internet project, there are five individuals who can really be credited with actually creating the Internet. Among them was J. C. R. Licklider, the head of the Information Processing Technology Office at ARPA. In his position, he thought up the idea of the Internet itself as a way of potentially unifying humans from around the United States (and the world) through a universal network.

3. Where did the term debugging come from From Grace Murray Hopper's report of finding an actual bug--a moth--inside a computer and removing it. See here:http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/pers -us/uspers-h/g-hoppr.htm

4. Details from Babbage’s Analytical engine I will give here an extract from Part II. of his Essay towards the Calculus of Functions, 1816, because it shows the working of his mind at that time, which further on led him to devote his life to the perfection of machinery for the numerical solution of Functions arrived at by mathematical analysis:—“My subsequent inquiries have produced several new methods of solving functional equations containing only one variable quantity and much more complicated, and have convinced me of the importance of the Calculus, particularly as an instrument of discovery in the more difficult branches of analysis. Nor is it only in the recesses of this abstract science that its advantages will be felt: it is peculiarly adapted to the discovery of those laws of action by which one particle of matter attracts or repels another of the same or a different species; consequently it may be applied to every branch of natural philosophy, where the object is to discover by calculation from the results of experiment the laws which regulate the action of the ultimate particles of bodies. To the accomplishment of these desirable purposes, it must be confessed that it is in its present state unequal; but should the labours of future inquirers give to it that perfection which other methods of investigation have attained, it is not too much to hope that its maturer age shall unveil the hidden laws which govern the phenomena of magnetic, electric, or even of chemical action

5. What Herman Hollerth’s tabulating machine invented for? In 1896, Hollerith established the Tabulating Machine Company to distribute and improve his basic machine. Patents and sales of the tabulating machine and other innovations made Hollerith a millionaire. In 1911 TMC merged with other companies, becoming the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. In 1914, C-T-R hiredThomas J. Watson as general manager. Watson later purchased the company, naming it IBM.... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888).Despite the development of computers during the 20th century, variations of Hollerith's card tabulating machine continue to have a place in modern data processing. They continue to be widely used in voting machines. Beyond giving a history of modern computers, our site covers many topics related to Internet technology

6. What the ENIAC was built for and were it was built n 1946, John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert developed the ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator). The American military sponsored their research; the army needed a computer for calculating artillery-firing tables, the settings used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy.The Ballistics Research Laboratory, or BRL, the branch of the military responsible for calculating the tables, heard about John Mauchly's research at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. John Mauchly had previously created several calculating machines, some with small electric motors inside. He had begun designing (1942) a better calculating machine based on the work of John Atanasoff that would use vacuum tubes to speed up calculations.John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert developed the ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator). The American military sponsored their research; the army needed a computer for calculating artillery-firing tables, the settings used for different weapons under varied conditions for target accuracy.The Ballistics Research Laboratory, or BRL, the branch of the military responsible for calculating the tables, heard about John Mauchly's research at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. John Mauchly had previously created several calculating machines, some with small electric motors inside. He had begun designing (1942) a better calculating machine based on the work of John Atanasoff that would use vacuum tubes to speed up calculations.

7. Define what a program is. A program is a set of instructions that are grouped together to accomplish a task or tasks. The instructions, called machine code or assembly code consist of things like reading and writing memory, arithmetic operations, and comparisons. While these instructions sound simple, it is actually possible to solve a huge group problems with them. The difficulty in doing so is that you must specify in exact detail precisely how. Good programming is both an art and a science, and what you will learn today is a beginning of the craft.As mentioned above, the individual instructions that the machine actually quite simple or low-level in computer parlance. Writing complex programs in assembly code took such a long time that eventually better programming languages were invented. A programming language, like C, is a formal set of grammar and syntax like assembly code; but the instructions in high-level languages encompass hundreds of assembly instructions. Programs called compilers translate a program written in a higher level language into assembly so that the computer can actually execute the instructions. Compilers let the programmer write programs so that humans can read them easily while the computer can still execute the instructions.Generally programming code is organized into text files with suffixes that indicate the programming language. In the case of C these files are appended with.co, and a C program is made up of at least one of these files

8. What was the benefit of the transistor replacing the vacuum tube? One reason is the heat value... vacuum tubes emit a large amount of heat, transistors will get warm but no where as hot as the vacuum tube.

9. What and who invented the first microcomputer? 1975: Ed Roberts, the "father of the microcomputer" designed the first microcomputer, the Altair 8800, which was produced by Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS). The same year, two young hackers, William Gates and Paul Allen approached MITS and promised to deliver a BASIC compiler. So they did and from the sale, Microsoft was born.

10. Explain what the binary system is. The word "binary" describes a system that has only two possible digits. To understand this, let's first compare this to a system you're probably more familiar with, the Decimal system. The word "decimal" describes a system that has ten possible digits. These are the digits 0 through 9. Every number expressed in the decimal system is a combination of these ten digits. You use the decimal system every day, it comes naturally, we all have 10 fingers and 10 toes (unless your family tree doesn't fork, but let's not go there), and some of us use those 10 fingers and toes extensively to help with every day addition and subtraction. The binary system works essentially the same way, with the only difference that it only has two digits. These are visually expressed by the digits 0 and 1. Every number expressed in the binary system is a combination of these two digits.

11. Herman Hollerith

12. The web sites Ask.com, answers.com,