Although the popularity of computers has only recently surged, computers are not a recent invention. Computers have actually been in use for over 5,000 years.

An example of an early computer would be the Abacus, which emerged in Asia around 3,000 B.C. It consisted of sliding beads on racks, and had the ability to perform mathematical equations consisting of addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Another, somewhat more recent computer, was the Pascaline. Invented in 1642, the Pascaline consisted of 8 wheels, having the ability to perform base 10 addition and subtraction calculations, up to 8 digits long.

In 1822, Charles Babbage, an English mathematics professor, began working on the design for a steam-powered computer, known as the Difference Engine. Babbage abandoned the Difference Engine after 10 years, in order to work on the design for a new machine, the Analytical Engine. With the assistance of Augusta Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace, Babbage designed a computer, which would accept input using punch cards--cards with small holes in them used to represent data. The Analytical Engine would have the ability to perform complex mathematical calculations, using numbers up to 50 digits long, and would be able to store up to 1,000 numbers in its memory. It also included support for conditional control, which would allow the mathematical calculations and the output to be manipulated based on whether or not certain conditions were met. Babbage died in 1871, and the design for the Analytical Engine was never completed. Two Swedish engineers, Georg and Edward Scheutz in 1833, though, built the Difference Engine to prove that the technology was not too advanced for it's time.

In 1890, due to the rapidly increasing population, the United States census was estimated to take 10 years to calculate. In response Herman Hollerith, an American scientist, created a machine which used punch cards to input information, and reduced the census calculation time to 6 weeks. Hollerith, in 1896 founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which later became IBM.

In 1939, Iowa State College professor John V. Atanasoff, and graduate student Clifford Berry, built the first all-electronic computer, which performed its calculations in binary, or base 2. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer would perform one calculation every 15 seconds. In comparison, computers today can perform over 150 billion calculations in 15 seconds.

During the Second World War, two computers were invented: the Z3 and the Colossus. The Z3 was developed by German engineer, Konrad Zuse in 1941, and was used for the design of airplanes and missiles. In 1943, the British government developed the Colossus for the purpose of cracking encrypted German communications.

In 1946, John Eckert and John Mauchly developed the ENIAC. The ENIAC was a general-purpose computer, consisting of 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, and 5 million soldered joints. ENIAC, though, suffered from major stability problems. Each day, an average of 50 burnt-out vacuum tubes were required to be replaced in order to keep the machine operational. Eckert and Mauchly later developed the EDVAC in 1952, which was based on the ENIAC, but included new improvements, such as the ability for the computer to hold both a computer program and data in it's memory, and the ability for the computer to interrupt and resume programs while they are running. In addition, the EDVAC was the first computer to include a Central Processing Unit, the device in a computer, which directs the computer's functions. Unfortunately, the EDVAC suffered from the same stability problems as the ENIAC.

During the 1950s, companies owning computers started to become more common. Built by the Remington-Rand Company in 1951, the UNIVAC was the first commercially available computer, and took advantage of EDVAC's design improvements. The UNIVAC weighed 16,000lb, contained 5,000 vacuum tubes, and would perform 1,000 calculations per second. The IBM 1401, released in 1959, was the first fully transistorized computer to be affordable by many companies. The 1401 had 4 kilobytes of memory, and would run programs written in powerful programming languages such as COBOL and FORTRAN.

In the 1970s, computers shifted from being insanely expensive machines that only large companies or governments could afford to own and operate, to reasonably priced devices designed for the consumer. Released by Steve Jobs in 1977, the Apple II, priced at $1,298, included support for color display, contained 4 kilobytes of memory, and had a 1 megahertz processor. Meanwhile, Atari released their gaming console, the Atari 2600, and Commodore released their first computer: the PET.

The IBM PC, released in 1981, is the ancestor of today's computers. It ran the MS-DOS 1.0 operating system, and, depending on the model, contained 16 to 256 kilobytes of memory. Its Central Processing Unit chip was an Intel 8088, running at 4.77 megahertz. IBM opened the design of the IBM PC; which provided computer hardware manufacturers with the ability to make "clones" of the computer, which is one of the main reasons why the majority of computers today are based on its design.

Popular types of computers in use today include, the Intel-compatible, used as desktop and server computers, the Sun Sparc, used primarily for servers, and the Apple Macintosh, used commonly as desktop computers. Computers today are roughly 400 times more powerful than the original IBM PC, and about a million times more powerful than supercomputers only a half a century ago.

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