More About Computers

Computers: devices that you can put info in, process the info, and give info
-started when the abacus was invented 10 000 years ago.

How computers work: electronic device that has input and output
input: keyboards, scanner, mouse, etc.
output: monitor, printer, speakers, etc.
CD's are storage devices
CPU is processor

Computers process electrical signals. There are 2 states of electricity which are only on and off. It can only understand these. Computers see on as 1 and off as 0, and this system is called binary. Binary is something that makes computers do much more. Everything is in binary, because it doesn't understand anything else.

The binary system can do so much more than it seems. If you use 6 digits of 0's or 1's, it actually has 63 different outcomes. A 0 or a 1 is called a bit. 8 bits are called bytes. 1000 bytes are called kilobytes, 1000 kilobytes are called megabytes, 1000 megabytes are called gigabytes, and 1000 gigabytes are called terabytes.

Rounding bytes to 1000 is necessary, because there are actually 1024 bytes to get a kilobyte (and so on). The reason for this is because there is no exact 1000 in the place values of the binary numbers.

* digit means fingers