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The earliest machine that is considered a direct ancestor to the digital computer was the Jacquard Loom. This used a series of heavy paper cards with holes punched into them to control the pattern weaved into cloth. Though the loom was primitive and mechanical, the video subsystem of a modern computer still works on a similar principal.
Through the years, punched cards and later punched tape were used to control other machines and store information. Teleprinters used paper tape to store messages for later transmission. Through the 1970s, early computers still used paper cards and tape to store data.
In the late 1800s, punched tape-controlled calculating machines were developed. In the mid-1900s, electromechanical and fully electronic automated calculators followed. Each machine had a particular purpose, such as calculating navigation tables or decoding ciphers, and could not do other tasks. The first machines that could perform different jobs based on instructions stored in a memory device (punched tape or electronic switches) were developed during World War II.
These big computers didn't do much. They could move data between memory devices. They could do some logic operations and addition. All the mathematics they did was by skillful manipulation of these functions. As transistors and then integrated circuits came along, these machines got smaller and smaller until computers that could fit on a desktop existed.
As these computers got faster and faster and more and more memory was added, the same primitive functions could now do all the things we expect computers to do. It is all done with a few very primitive operations but billions of such operations every second.
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