Thursday, September 20, 2007

First Blog

Before I couldnt agree that the ABACUS was the first computer. Why? because first of all it looks a lot different from the computer we all know, second it's not electronic. I couldnt see a connection.

abacus

But when I was about to write this blog, I just saw a connection. I have seen how it could have influenced the design of modern computers.

I dont know how to use an abacus, but i know one thing, you either move the balls to the left or to the right. There's no such thing as putting the ball hanging in the middle.

The CPU's of modern computers are digital, they only understand 1's (highs) and 0's (lows). so i thought, that the abacus CAN be like the computer's CPU. if you place the balls on the left side, you may represent it with a low, and if you put the balls on the right you may represent it with a high..get the idea?

the only difference is..when you read high's and low's in a computer, you read it as binary (sign and magnitude, 2's complement, 1's complement depending on what was defined by the architecture). in an abacus, i think you count the balls, but the basic idea is the same, you represent the numbers (problem) using bits, then solve that problem using those bits, and then output the bits, then convert those bits (output/answer) to a number understandable by humans

Thats why i believe now that the abacus was the first computer..

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