countingmachine2 compatibility mode

20/02/2014

1

• For thousand of years people have thought up ways of

working out long, difficult sum quickly.

• The simple machine they invented were early types of calculators

• Counting frames like abacus were first used 3000 years ago and still are today.

• some Japanese work out sum on them so fast that you can hardly see their fingers move

A Few hundred years ago people began to use

mathematical tables-list numbers which you

look up to work out sum quickly

20/02/2014

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• The first calculating machine were mechanical adding

machine. You had to set some levers, then crank a hand to work the machine.

• Next there were electrical counting machine. Modern calculators use integrated circuits. They work quickly and accurately, yet are small and cheap

• A computer is an electronic machine. It can store information and do sums but it cannot think by itself. It has to be given information and told what to do with it. This is called programming. Computers can carry out thousand of instruction in a second.

• Early computers were big and expensive

and did not always work very well. They

could do little more than a modern

calculator.