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The abucus was invented in Asia but was used in ancientBabylon, China, and throughout Europe until the late middle ages. The abacus uses a system of sliding beads in a rack for addition and subtraction.
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The difference engine could perform complex operations such as squaring numbers automatically. Babbage built a prototype of the difference engine, but the actual device was never produced.
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In 1819, Joseph Jacquard, a French weaver, discovered that the weaving instructions for his loom could be stored on cards with holes punched in them.
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The Mark 1 was the first computer. It was built, in 1944, jointly by
IBM and Harvard University under the leadership of Howard Aiken. Punched cards were used to feed data into the machine. -
In 1946, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator was built at the University of Pennsylvania. It contained 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed some 30 tons.
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In 19511, the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was built and sold to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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In 1956, the invention of transistors resulted in smaller, faster more reliable, and more energy-effecient computers. The era also saw the energence of the software development industry, with the introduction of FORTRAN and OCOBOL, two early programming languages.
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In 1970, the microprocessor, an entire CPU on a single chip, was invented.
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In 19977, StephenWozniak and Steven Jobs design and built the first Apple computer in their garage.
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In 1980s, clones of the IBM PC made the personal computer even more affordable.
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In 1981, IBM introduced its personal computer (PC).
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By the mid-1990s, people from many walks of life were able to afford them.
