The evolution of the computer"He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past."-George OrwellThe evolution of the computer has been extraordinary. There have been amazing achievements in the computing industry, which dates back almost 2000 years. The first existence of the computer dates back to the 1st century, but the electronic computer has only existed for over half a century. Over the last 40 years computers have changed dramatically. They had a great impact on the American way of life. A computer is found in almost every company and in one in two families (Pavilion, 156). Our society relies critically on computers for nearly all daily operations and processes. Only once in a lifetime can a new invention like the computer be born. The first computer, known as an abacus, was made of wood and parallel wires strung with beads. Arithmetic operations were performed when beads were moved along the string according to “programming” rules that had to be memorized by the user (Soma, 14). The second oldest computer, invented by Blaise Pascal in 1694, was a “digital calculating machine”. Pascal designed this first known digital computer to help his father, who was a tax collector. Pascal's computer could only add numbers and these had to be entered by turning the dials (Soma, 32). It required a manual process like its ancestor, the abacus. Automation was introduced in the early 1800s by a mathematics professor named Charles Babbage. He created an automatic calculating machine powered by steam and stored up to 1000 50-digit numbers. Unlike its two first ancestors, Babbage's invention was capable of performing various operations. It was based on punched cards, called “punch cards”. These cards carried out the programming and memorization operations of the machine. Unfortunately, Babbage's creation failed due to a lack of mechanical precision and a lack of demand for the product (Soma, 46). The machine could not work efficiently because the technology was not adequate to make it work efficiently. Interest in computers waned for many years, and it wasn't until the mid-1800s that people began to take an interest in them again. Between 1850 and 1900, mathematics and physics fields began to advance. The advances involved extremely arduous calculations and formulas that were time consuming when done manually.