There are three different types of computers namely analog, digital and hybrid.
~ Analog Computer operates by measuring physical units such as voltage, pressure, temperature, speed, etc. Analog computers are used for scientific and engineering applications that deal with a property which is changing continuously.
~ Digital Computer operates on numbers consisting of 0′s and 1′s. These two numbers are called binary values. The characters and words are also represented in the binary form. Digital computers are useful for business as well as scientific and engineering applications. The term computer is commonly used in place of digital computers most of the people take it for granted.
~ Hybrid Computer combines analog and digital capabilities, which are used for special purposes. ‘ROBOT’ is the best example of a hybrid computer.
The first operational digital computer was the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). It was developed in 1946 by John Mauchy and J. Presper Eckert at the university of Pennsylvania.
Professor John Von Neumann gave the idea of stored program concept which is the key concept in the design of today’s computers. According to stored program concept, the program and its associated data must be stored in a high speed memory during execution of a program.
EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was the first stored program computer and it became operational in 1951.
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