- There are many aspects to making a computer do something for users.
- Computer Science is the science of building computational entities with known and verifiable properties. Computer Science is concerned with underlying principles of computing, particularly with the creation of software, and that's Programming.
- Other related fields include
- Computer Systems Engineering - designing and building computers
- Information Technology - creating and using application software, using up-to-date computing techniques
- Computer Information Systems - using software for business
- Computer Science fits in between CSE and IT
- See the range of courses in a Computer Science major!
- Charles Babbage is credited as the father of computer. Although never actually built, in the 1850's he proposed the computing machines called Difference Engine (non-programmable - computed only polynomial functions) and Analytical Engine (programmable), which possessed the core characteristics of today's computers.
- Ada Lovelace, who wrote demonstration programs for Analytical Engine, is credited as the first programmer (but was probably about fifth, after Babbage and his three sons).
- The first modern computer (non-programmable - solved only systems of linear equations) was built by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry of Iowa State University, 1937-1942.
- An electromechanical computer MARK I was built by Howard Aiken of Harvard, 1939-1945.
- The first completely electronic computer ENIAC I was built by John Mauchly and Prespers Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania, 1943-1946.
