Computers are probably the most world-changing, history altering invention ever invented. Like
ever. And now we use computers pretty much every day, and when I say computers I'm not
just talking about big clunky desktop computers. Laptops are computers. Tablets are computers.
Smartphones are computers. Even gaming consoles are computers.
But despite how we are constantly surrounded by computers, most people don't actually understand
what a computer is, which is why in this course, you'll learn where computers came from,
what they really are, and what they can truly do for us. Let's get into it.
With computers so interwoven into our everyday world, it's hard to imagine a world without
computers. But computers are a relatively new invention. For thousands of years,
they just didn't exist. If you wanted to send somebody a message, there was no texting or DMS.
You had to write it on paper, give it to a pigeon, and hope the pigeon flew to the right person.
You might think that's a joke, but you'd be surprised. Carrier pigeons were absolutely a real
thing. How did they know who to go to? Huh. In the pre-computer world, if you wanted the latest news,
there were no apps or even the internet. You had to read it in the newspaper or find out through
word of mouth from your friends or family. If you wanted music, you had to pop a record onto
a gramophone or go to a live performance. There was no streaming or downloading. If
you needed to perform calculations, you would use an abacus. This involves moving these beads
back and forth to keep track while you add, subtract, multiply, or divide. Even today,
computers haven't completely replaced all of those things. We still send paper letters sometimes,
although we now send it through mail, not tied to a bird. And there are still plenty of people who
read newspapers. My personal favorite is the comic section. And we can still attend live concerts.
Even computers can't replicate the feeling of crowd surfing yet.
Although, the way virtual reality is coming along, who knows?
The invention of computers completely changed the way everything was done, or should I say
inventions? Because the computer wasn't a single invention, so much as a series of rapid inventions
starting in the 1800s. In the 1830s, the world's first computer, the analytical engine, was
designed to automatically perform calculations. It was completely mechanical and powered by steam,
not electricity. You would tell it what to do by feeding punched cards like this into it,
and then a bunch of moving gears and levers and other mechanical doohickeys would start moving
around until the calculation was complete. In 1890, the United States census was sped up with
a new tabulating machine that read and counted census data off of punch cards. Yeah, punch cards
were how we told machines what to do for a long time. This demonstration proved that automation
could speed up tasks such as analyzing data. So businesses everywhere started using tabulating
machines, and there was suddenly a huge demand for machines that could speed up other tasks as well.
In 1941, a partially electronic computer known as the Atanasoff-Berry computer,
or ABC, was invented. But that didn't stay in the news for very long, because five years later,
the electronic numerical integrator and computer, or ENIAC for short, became the first
fully electronic computer. ENIAC was way faster than the mechanical computers that came before,
because it didn't have mechanical pieces slowing it down. Unfortunately ENIAC also took up 1800
square feet, the size of an entire house. So it couldn't really go anywhere after it was built.
In 1958, the first integrated circuit, also known as a computer chip, was invented.
This condensed huge circuit boards full of vacuum tubes, transistors, resistors,
wires, basically all the pieces that made ENIAC so gigantic, into a single small piece. Now computers
didn't have to be huge. The first computer chip didn't look all that fancy, but they quickly
evolved into the intricately designed computer chips that exist in every device we use today.
But the inventions didn't end with computer chips. In 1968, a demonstration known as the
mother of all demos revolutionized computers with a bunch of new technologies. Among the
demonstrated capabilities were the first ever computer mouse, which would finally replace
punch cards as a way of telling the computer what to do, and a screen display with multiple windows,
similar to what we see on most modern computer displays. In the 70s, things really sped up.
Pong was released and became the first commercially successful video game.
Personal home computers started hitting the market from a variety of manufacturers, and lots
of software and hardware development companies were founded, including Microsoft and Apple.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a web of linked documents that
computers worldwide could navigate and contribute to. A world wide web.
It's thanks to that invention that you can visit websites like this one on almost any computer.
Since then, computers have been getting smaller and smaller, faster and faster, all while being
capable of doing more and more. And as a bonus, they're also getting cheaper and cheaper to buy.
In fact, a man named Gordon Moore predicted this in 1965, in what's known today as Moore's Law,
saying that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years.
That sounds like technical computer mumbo-jumbo, but what it essentially means is that computers
keep getting smaller, faster, and cheaper at an exponential rate. So far it's held true.
Can you imagine? The computers we have today are already super small and fast and can do so much,
and in a few years, they'll be even smaller, faster, and capable of even more,
and be less expensive. Oh, I can't wait for the future. Now that you know how far computers have
come from the past, the rest of this course will be focused on modern day computers.
The first unit will be all about the hardware of computers. What are computers actually made of?
At essence, they're just rocks with electricity in them, but there's so much more to it than that.
In unit 2, you'll learn how to navigate modern computers. You might think you already know what
you're doing, but I guarantee I can teach you a couple of new tricks. In unit 3, I'll teach you
how to operate some of the most widely used programs on modern computers. Productivity
software. That's things like Google Docs and Microsoft PowerPoint, which are used in schools,
businesses, and homes around the world. Unit 4, we'll officially enter the world of the internet,
where you'll learn about software used for communication, like internet browsers and email.
In unit 5 we'll explore the do's and don'ts of Internet research. You'll learn how to get
more useful results in searches, how to be aware of the biased results you might find,
and how to give credit where credit is due when you want to use something somebody else made.
Unit 6 is an important one: internet safety. The internet gives us access to all the information in
the world, but it also gives other people access to you, and some of those people are not nice.
This unit will teach you how to be careful and protect yourself while surfing the web.
Speaking of being nice on the internet, unit 7 is all about digital citizenship.
The internet has connected us all in one giant digital community,
which means you have to understand the rules for being a responsible citizen of that community.
And in the last unit, you'll be asked to apply several of the skills you've learned in the course
to a final project. So keep all your notes, because you might need them. We're going to
have a lot of fun in this course, and you're going to learn skills that will be useful no
matter what you do in life. And remember, your brain is the smartest computer in the world.
So keep it charged and never stop updating it. Get ready to learn, and I'll see you next time.