By pragyansharma polavarapu
The word computer is on every lip. The thing computer too is everywhere—with students, in homes, laboratories, shops, supermarkets, hotels etc. We pay all bills through the computerized counters. It is inside the digital camera,digital watch,digital phone ,in the friz,in TV and in music player ! It is on the jet plane and space rocket . Finally the great news is that even the small wrist worn computers have arrived.
There are surprises galore .Suppose a
person called on the phone the friend living in a neighboring house and
the call broke off suddenly. But the
call will be connected by the digital phone to your friend via a
wireless channel via China Russia and America! How you may ask. If there is an
internet connection in the house you can use computer/digital phone to
communicate with a person in any country by voice channel or video channel. The
world has entirely changed .It is as if all the world has become contracted
into a village of lanes and bye lanes.
Human race is blessed with a new
boon by Nature. They are given a power to talk with an invisible person living
in another corner of earth and can even
see that other person’s moving picture.
Suppose a person typed the poem “Twinkle,Twinkle ,Little star!” in a
WORD program screen on a computer .We
can enlarge the letters to very big or
very small size or to very fat or very lean shape or change their color all in a second. We can attach
photo clips, video clips or music clips.
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Suppose we have to copy a 10 page essay from a
note book in real world to another note book (also in the real world). The
person who is given that work frets and fumes
and feels irritated and agrees to complete it only by
following day or in another two days. Instead, suppose we gave the task to a computer-- to copy a
10 page essay of “ file A” in
the computer to “file B” in the same
computer or “file C “ in a computer on next table or in another city or another country . For the computers it is a work
of one second . Even if the file A were
in a computer in a faraway city or a faraway country , if there is internet
connection in your house, you can copy that matter into file B in any computer in the world in a second.
Nowadays studios take photos and give a print in a few
minutes. They may even help in obtaining a copy of photo existing in a computer
in another country and hand it over to
you in minutes! (But be careful about
the password). All these are real great technical wonders .
Greater wonders follow .The very first “ancient computers”(used by
US army and US and European universities) were unwieldy
giants with 15,000 thermionic tubes ( small bulbs with hot filaments
inside).Each such computer required an air- conditioned hall to accommodate the 10 or 15 cabinets of electric parts . Each such giant was really
only a mathematical calculator perhaps a
thousand times less powerful than a
modern pocket calculator .The old
giant computers costed a million dollars
each as against cost of modern pocket calculator coming for less than 5 dollars .
But
we always show the greatest
respect to good old giant-sized computer
machines as they proved the genius of great electrical engineers and
mathematicians to create mathematical
and logic circuits using flowing electricity . The old bulky computers could calculate in a split second a
trajectory to send a rocket to destroy in the sky an already airborne enemy rocket coming from
2000 miles. Such giant machine could prepare salary bills of 10,000 employees
or print answer sheets of 10,000 students in an hour or two. We salute the
inventors.
Now we talk of the wonder of wonders.
Let us compare the sizes of the old and new computers. The modern
desktops/laptops/I pads/ digital phones—(and also all the computerized gadgets like
shop counter machine/the tv/the digital camera/ the washing machine/the
friz/electronic toys etc) ---all contain
in them a silicon chip which is wonderful creation of science . It is a “microprocessor” of the size
of a shirt button.
The chip contains a few hundred
thousand interconnected sub-microscopic
“ transistors” creating a most powerful
computer system and also vast electronic
memory(i.e. a data storage area) . Each such silicon chip is in fact a self-contained tiny computer. Each chip contains hundreds of
thousands of inter-connected transistors . The great wonder is that “each
submicroscopic transistor in the chip” is equal in power to “one thermionic tube” the hot filament glass bulb in the ancient computer!
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Now what about “speed” and “patience”
of a computer . After a person sits for a long time of typing
/writing / counting work he
gets tired and even short tempered
. Not so the computer . It never gets tired or short tempered. It can do
non-stop for an hour a million basic calculations like 5+2, 4x2 etc. What is wonderful and unbelievable is the
fact that its digital brain completes all the million calculations in a second
! Only the printing process takes hours! The computer never gets tired and
never commits mistakes .If the electrical connections are not good it just
stops but does not commit mistakes. It gives always 100% correct answers. The
mistakes if any detected are done only by humans
handling the computer .
What is the meaning of a software program ?imagine an expert cook
in a hotel. The manager sends all ingredients to prepare a particular
dish—wheat flour,sugar, ghee, spices and nuts. The cook has the “software” in
his brain . After an hour out comes the
sweet cakes with great flavor and taste.
The ingredients are the INPUT. The prepared sweet cakes are the OUTPUT .
The special skills of the cook is the SOFTWARE. The cook is the equivalent of
the COMPUTER .
Finally a very serious universal truth. The aim of
first electrical engineers and mathematicians was to make the stream of
electrons flowing in metal wires (at speeds near to 300,000 kilometers per
second) to do mathematics. Every computer treats every problem in its digital
brain only interms of numbers---(1,2,3,4…. etc), (+,-,x,/,square,cube,square
root ,cube root …etc), (<,>,= ,not equal, yes/no ) etc etc.
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