Brief History of Computing

As commerce developed in earlier societies, people began to realize the need for a bookkeeping system to enable them to add, subtract, and record simple transactions. To facilitate the bookkeeping process, counting devices were developed. At first, people used fingers, stones, and sticks to count. Later on, mechanical calculators emerged, but they were slow and bulky. When electricity was discovered, electronic components replaced the bulky mechanical parts and enabled smaller, faster computing devices. Computers are continually evolving towards faster computations, increased storage capacity, and smaller size, while maintaining their affordability.