Why Learn Computing?

History of Computing

Physics Basis

Modern computing is fundamentally at a base level, physics. Electricity is transferred along atoms from the power station, such as a coal processing station, hydro-electric dam, solar farm, wind turbines farm, or nuclear power generating station, send electricity to sub-stations which is “stepped down” in voltage, converting some electrical energy to heat, and then at least stepped down again to a local transformer either as a box on the ground or on an electrical pole, into your home and stepped down again to the mains line voltage.

Your computer is plugged into the wall socket which provides this energy which is then transformed from alternating current to direct current which is fed to components throughout the computer. There are of course more steps which the electricity may take depending on your location and electricity supplier, but this is the conceptual path of how the energy in the form of electrical energy is produced and delivered to your computer and its components.

Types of computer systems

It is important to note that desktops, which look like a tower standing up or laying on its side, are left plugged into the wall outlet, while other portable devices such as mobile phones, tablets, netbooks, and laptops may be carried around in fancy backpacks, handbags, and so forth. These mobile devices have batteries which receive charge from the power adapter, and then deliver through the laptop.

Another class of computer is called a server, which is a computer designed for large scale, multi-user computer and is generally not used in a home setting, and is housed in a “data centre” which is usually a well-guarded facility, are continually monitored by expert technicians, has exceptional connectivity to other data centres and important computing centres, shared by many tenants and can easily cost millions of dollars. Data centres are usually expensive to run as they consume a lot of energy, and is one of the fundamental costs of computing today.

Where it came from

There where special electronic computers built in the 1940’s and the first mainframe multi-purpose computer was finished in 1945 for US military applications.