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Abacus - A manual computing device consisting of a frame holding parallel rods strung with movable counters.
Alert() - Displays a popup dialog box with an OK button. You pass a single literal string or variable as an argument to the alert().
Analytical Engine - The Analytical Engine was to be built from brass gears powered by steam with input given on punched cards.
ARPANET - Advanced Reasearch Projects Agency. A part of the Department of Defense ARPANET developed the first large scale computer network. This network turned into the Internet and even outlived ARPA.
Arrays - Sets of data objects represented by one variable name.
Attribute - Key words placed within HTML tags that define or modify the behavior of the tag. In the following example bgcolor is an attribute of the <BODY> tag: <BODY bgcolor="blue">
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Babbage, Charles (1791-1871)- Babbage is known today as the "Father of Computing" for his creation of the Analytical machine.
Bardeen, John - Along with William B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattain - invented the transistor at The Bell Laboratories.
BASIC (Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) - developed at Dartmouth College by Thomas E. Kurtz and John Kemeny.
Bit - The smallest chunk of information a computer works with. A bit is either a 1 or a 0. It is represented as electricity in a computer by positive voltage or no voltage. Obviously a bit by itself can not contain much information, this is why data is processed as bytes or words. A 32-bit processor processes 32 bits at a time.
Block Comments - Are used when you want to add a multi-line comment. To add a block comment start the comment with /* and type in the necessary text, then close the comment with */.
Brattain, Walter H. - Along with William B. Shockley and John Bardeen - invented the transistor at The Bell Laboratories.
Byte - Eight bits of data. A byte could be 10001111. Each character on a keyboard is represented by an ASCII Byte code like the byte above.
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Carriage Return - A special code ("\n" in JavaScript) that moves text to the next line. Essentially the same as pressing the "Enter" key.
C++ - A high level programming language commonly used to write high performance applications.
COBOL - (COmmon Business-Orientated Language) was developed by Grace Murray Hopper, finished in 1961. It was the first widely-used high-level programming language for business applications. The language is now considered obsolete, but many COBOL program are still in use today. COBOL's method of storing a year with only the last two number (ie: 99) caused the Y2K panic.
Colossus - The earliest programmable
electronic computer. It was created in 1943 to crack the German "enigma"
code. (first gen.)
Concatanate - To link together or join.
Confirm() - Displays a dialog box that contains a Cancel button as well as an OK button. When the OK button is pressed a value of true is returned and when the Cancel button is pressed a value of false is returned.
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De Forest, Lee - Developed the Electronic Tube (or Electronic Valve) in America. Without this invention, it would have been impossible to make digital electronic computers.
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Electronic Tube (Electronic Valve) - developed by Lee De Forest in America. Without this invention, it would have been impossible to make digital electronic computers.
ENIAC - (Electronic Numerical Integrator
and Computer) was one of the first totally electronic, valve driven, digital,
computers. Development started in 1943 and finished in 1946 by John W. Mauchly
and J. Presper Eckert. It weighed 30 tons and contained 18,000 Electronic Valves,
consuming around 25kW of electrical power (first gen.)
Expression - An expression is any legal
combination of symbols that represents a value.
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Flowers, Thomas, Dr. - Built the earliest Programmable Electronic Computer first ran (in Britain). It contained 2400 Vacuum tubes for logic, and was called the Colossus. It was used at The Post Office Research Laboratories in London, to crack the German code used by the 'Enigma' machines.
FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) - An early programming language language that was designed for use by engineers, mathematicians, and other users and creators of scientific algorithms. It has a very succinct and spartan syntax. Today, the C language has largely displaced FORTRAN.
Function - A named section of a program that performs a specific task. In this sense, a function is a type of procedure or routine.
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Heath Robinson - Created by Max Newman, Wynn-Williams, and their team (including Alan Turing). This is a specialized machine for cipher-breaking, not a general-purpose calculator or computer but some sort of logic device, using a combination of electronics and relay logic. (first gen.)
Hewlett, David - Along with William Packard formed Hewlett-Packard in a garage in California. They tossed a coin to determine the name of their company.
Hewlett-Packard formed by David Hewlett and William Packard in a garage in California. They tossed a coin to determine the name of their company.
Hollerith, Herman - The creator of the Hollerith Electric Tabulating System, the ancestor to computers as we know them today. The system used cards with punched holes to tabulate data. Though first used in 1887 for calculating mortality statistics, Hollerith's punch card system became widely known when it was used to tabulate the U.S population during the 1890 census.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) - HTML is the most basic language on the Internet. This programming language is used to make webpages and many objects on the pages, such as tables and image maps.
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IBM Corporation - International Business Machines
Index - the number used to denote the positions of different elements in an array. Array indices begin with the number zero [0].
Integrated Circuit (IC) - Sometimes called a chip or microchip, is a semiconductor wafer on which thousands or millions of tiny resistors, capacitors, and transistors are fabricated. These devices are used in computers, computer networks, modems, and frequency counters. Logic gates are the fundamental building blocks of digital ICs that work with binary data, that is, signals that have only two different states, called low (logic 0) and high (logic 1). A single integrated circuit (IC), such as a microprocessor chip, can do the work of a set of vacuum tubes that would fill a large building and require its own electric generating plant.
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Jacquard, Joseph-Marie - developed an automatic loom controlled by punched cards.
JavaScript - a scripting language that is executed from within a web browser. Scripting languages add dynamic capabilities to static webpages.
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Kilby, Jack St. Claire - an engineer with Texas Instruments, developed the integrated circuit (IC) or microchip in 1958.
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Line Comments - Line comments are created by adding two slashes // in front of the desired text for commentation. Line comments can only be used when commenting on one line of text.
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Machine language - the binary-coded instructions built into the hardware of a computer. Each type of microprocessor has its own set of hard-wired machine language instructions.
Mark I - The first program controlled
calculator, built at Harvard University in 1943. It consisted of many
calculators which worked on parts of the same problem. (first gen.)
Memory access time - The amount time, measure in nanoseconds, it takes a processor to reference data stored in RAM.
Microchip - A unit of packaged computer circitry, called an intergrated circuit, that is manufactured from the material such as silicon at a very small scale. Microchips are made for program logic and for computer memory.
Microprocessor - It's sometimes called a logic chip. It is the "engine" that goes into motion when you turn your computer on. A microprocessor is designed to perform arithmetic and logic operations that make use of small number-holding areas called registers. Typical microprocessor operations include adding, subtracting, comparing two numbers, and fetching numbers from one area to another. These operations are the result of a set of instructions that are part of the microprocessor design.
MIPS - (Millions of Instructions per second) The number of operations (ie: 2+2, 19 * 4) a computer can execute per second.
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Operating System - The operating system is a program that communicates with the computer's hardware, allocates resources to programs, and presents an interface that allows users to communicate with programs.
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Packard, William - Along with David Hewlett formed Hewlett-Packard in a garage in California. They tossed a coin to determine the name of their company.
Parameters - Are variables with in a function. Parameters are used to customize a program.
Parallel Processing - Computing data by using more than one CPU at once or by having one CPU work on different pieces of data simultaneously. Data can be computed much faster by breaking up information and sending each part to a different processor to compute instead of processing each piece of data with one processor.
Pascal, Blaise - A French mathematician, built a mechanical adding machine (the "Pascaline"). Although it was more limited than the "Calculating Clock," Pascal's machine became far more well known. He was able to sell about a dozen of his machines in various forms and they could deal with up to eight digits.
Pascaline - An early mechanical calculator developed by Blaise Pascal in 1642. It was able to add and subtract two decimal numbers.
Pixels - Short for Picture Element, a pixel is a single point in a graphic image.
Punched Cards - Early computer programs were punched into special index cards by a special typewriter. These punched cards were then fed into the computer in order to run the program.
Prompt() - Displays a dialog
box with a message, a text box, an OK buttom, and a Cancel button. Any text
entered into a prompt() method's text box by a user can be assigned to a variable.
Protocol - An agreed-upon format for transmitting data between two devices.
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Quartz oscillator - An electronic circuit designed to produce a stable alternating current (from + to -) that is used to stabilize frequency at which electric current is sent. Many watches (in addition to old computers) use quartz crystals.
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RAM (Random Access Memory) - Temporary storage that allows the processor to access data faster than by accessing it directly from the hard drive.
Resolution - Refers to the sharpness and clarity of an image.
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Schickard,Wilhelm - (1592-1635), of Tuebingen, Wuerttemberg (now in Germany), made a "Calculating Clock". This mechanical machine was capable of adding and subtracting up to six digit numbers, and it warned of an overflow by ringing a bell. Operations were carried out by wheels, and a complete revolution of the units wheel incremented the tens wheel.
Semiconductor - A semiconductor
is a substance, usually a solid chemical element or compound, that can conduct
electricity under some conditions but not others, making it a good medium for
the control of electrical current. Silicon is the best known semiconductor.
A semiconductor can perform the function of a vacuum tubes hundreds of times
its size.
String - A data type consisting of a collection of characters.
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Translation - The process of converting a user-written program from its high-level, English-like, form to a low-level, binary (machine language) form. Assemblers, Interpreters, and Compilers are types of programs that perform translations.
Transistor - A transistor regulates current or voltage flow and acts as a switch or gate for electronic signals. A transistor consists of three layers of a semiconductor material, each capable of carrying a current. A semiconductor is a material such as germanium and silicon that conducts electricity in a "semi-enthusiastic" way. It's somewhere between a real conductor such as copper and an insulator (like the plastic wrapped around wires).
Turing, Alan - Founder of computer science, mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker and visionary.
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UNIVAC I - was used by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. "UNIVAC" stands for "UNIversally Automatic Computer" and was completed in 1951.
UNIX - Released for free in 1974 UNIX quickly became the operating system of choice for nearly all new computing platforms. UNIX has evolved a lot since its initial release, and it is still one of the most widely used and stable operating systems. Versions are released by IBM (AIX), SGI (IRIX), SUN(Solaris), and by nonprofit organizations (Linux, BSD).
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Vacuum Tube - A vacuum tube
is a device sometimes used to amplify electronic signals. In most applications,
the vacuum tube is obsolete, having been replaced decades ago by the bipolar
transistor and, more recently, by the field-effect transistor. However, tubes
are still used in some high-power amplifiers, especially at microwave radio
frequencies and in some hi-fi audio systems. Vacuum tubes are making a comeback
among audiophiles who insist that tubes deliver better audio quality than transistors.
Variable - A symbol or name that stands for a value.
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Watson, Thomas (former chairman of IBM) - "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
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