Republic of the Philippines

BACOLOD CITY COLLEGE

Taculing Road, Bacolod City 6100

DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY

Subject: COMPUTER FUNDAMENTALS (COMP 1)
1st Semester
A.Y. 2022 - 2023

Module #1
INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS
(WEEK 1)
Prepared by:

Eng. Joshua M. Lopez, MEECE

Instructor

Originally created on
September 18, 2020

This Module Belongs To:

_____________________________________________ Course/Year/Section: ____________________

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Table of Contents
How to Use This Module..........................................................................................................................................................................3
About Me .........................................................................................................................................................................................................3
OVERVIEW.....................................................................................................................................................................................................4
OBJECTIVES ................................................................................................................................................................................................4
DISCUSSION 1: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS ................................................................................................................4
Early Computing (Concise History) ...............................................................................................................................................4
WHAT IS A COMPUTER?...................................................................................................................................................................6
What Makes a Computer, a Computer? ......................................................................................................................................6
Hardware and Software ......................................................................................................................................................................6
Input .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Output .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
TYPES OF COMPUTERS .................................................................................................................................................................. 8
REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................................................................................9
Contact Me If You Have Questions ....................................................................................................................................................9

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How to Use This Module

Welcome! 😇😇

In this module, you will be presented with the introductory topics covering the introduction to computers, the Internet,
and the world wide web. This module presents the early days of computing, details what a computer is, the parts of a
computer (hardware and software), various types of computers, and types of personal computers (PCs). Also
discussed are the brief history of the internet, what the internet is, the wires, cables, & Wi-Fi, IP addresses and DNS,
packets, routing, and reliability.

Welcome to the BSIT family and we are looking forward to your success in your education, career, and in life! Stay
safe and God bless.

Have fun learning! 😃😃

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

-Benjamin Franklin

About Me

Hi! 😃😃 My name is Joshua M. Lopez. I am an electronics engineer (ECE), graduated with a Master in Engineering major
in Electronics and Communications Engineering (MEECE) from University of St. La Salle, and Bachelor of Science in
Electronics and Communications Engineering (BSECE) from Technological University of the Philippines Visayas. I am
also a Google Certified Educator Levels 1 & 2, Certified Microsoft Innovative Educator, I have a Computer Systems
Servicing NC II (CSS), and Trainer’s Methodology Level 1 (TM1) from Technical Education and Skills Development
Authority (TESDA).

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OVERVIEW
This module presents the days of the early computing, details what a computer is, the parts of a computer
(hardware and software), various types of computers, and types of personal computers (PCs). Also
discussed are the brief history of the internet, what the internet is, the wires, cables, & Wi-Fi, IP addresses
and DNS, packets, routing, and reliability.

OBJECTIVES
1. Discuss the fundamental concepts of computers, its functions, and components.
2. Describe the different parts of the computer (input devices, output devices, system unit, etc.)
3. Acknowledge the vital role of computer literacy as a tool for success in the 21st century workplace.
4. Identify and describe various broadband Internet connections and how information travels the
Internet.
5. Recognize the role of Internet technologies in the society today.

DISCUSSION 1: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS

Early Computing (Concise History)

Computers are the lifeblood of today’s world. If they were to suddenly turn off, all at once, the power grid
would shut down, cars would crash, planes would fall, water treatment plants would stop, stock markets
would freeze, trucks with food wouldn’t know where to deliver, and employees wouldn’t get paid. Even many
non-computer objects– are made in factories run by computers. Computing really has transformed nearly
every aspect of our lives. And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of technology-driven global change.
Advances in manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution brought a new scale to human civilization - in
agriculture, industry and domestic life. Mechanization meant superior harvests and more food, mass
produced goods, cheaper and faster travel and communication, and usually a better quality of life. And
computing technology is doing the same right now – from automated farming and medical equipment, to
global telecommunications and educational opportunities, and new frontiers like Virtual Reality and Self
Driving Cars. We are living in a time likely to be remembered as the Electronic Age. With billions of
transistors in just your smartphones, computers can seem pretty complicated, but really, they’re just simple
machines that perform complex actions through many layers of abstraction. We will revisit the early days
of computing and see how it has evolved.

The earliest recognized device for computing was the abacus, invented in Mesopotamia around 2500
BCE. It’s essentially a hand operated calculator, that helps add and subtract many numbers. It also stores
the current state of the computation, much like your hard drive does today. The abacus was created
because, the scale of society had become greater than what a single person could keep and manipulate
in their mind.

Over the next 4000 years, humans developed all sorts of clever computing devices, like the astrolabe,
which enabled ships to calculate their latitude at sea. Or the slide rule, for assisting with multiplication and
division. And there are literally hundred of types of clocks created that could be used to calculate sunrise,
tides, positions of celestial bodies, and even just the time. Each one of these devices made something that
was previously laborious to calculate much faster, easier, and often more accurate –– it lowered the barrier
to entry, and at the same time, amplified our mental abilities.

As early computer pioneer Charles Babbage said: “At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the
contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.” However, none of these devices were
called “computers”. The earliest documented use of the word “computer” is from 1613, in a book by Richard
Braithwait. And it wasn’t a machine at all - it was a job title. Braithwait said, “I have read the truest computer
of times, and the best arithmetician that ever breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number”. In
those days, computer was a person who did calculations, sometimes with the help of machines, but often

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not. This job title persisted until the late 1800s, when the meaning of computer started shifting to refer to
devices. Notable among these devices was the Step Reckoner, built by German polymath Gottfried Leibniz
in 1694. Leibniz said “... it is beneath the dignity of excellent men to waste their time in calculation when any
peasant could do the work just as accurately with the aid of a machine.” It worked kind of like the odometer
in your car, which is really just a machine for adding up the number of miles your car has driven. With some
clever mechanical tricks, the Step Reckoner was also able to multiply and divide numbers. Multiplications
and divisions are really just many additions and subtractions.

Charles Babbage proposed a new mechanical device called the Difference Engine, a much more complex
machine that could approximate polynomials. Babbage started construction in 1823, and over the next two
decades, tried to fabricate and assemble the 25,000 components, collectively weighing around 15 tons.
Unfortunately, the project was ultimately abandoned. But, in 1991, historians finished constructing a
Difference Engine based on Babbage's drawings and writings - and it worked! But more importantly, during
construction of the Difference Engine, Babbage imagined an even more complex machine - the Analytical
Engine. Unlike the Difference Engine, Step Reckoner and all other computational devices before it - the
Analytical Engine was a “general purpose computer”. It could be used for many things, not just one particular
computation; it could be given data and run operations in sequence; it had memory and even a primitive
printer. Like the Difference Engine, it was ahead of its time, and was never fully constructed. However, the
idea of an “automatic computer” – one that could guide itself through a series of operations automatically,
was a huge deal, and would foreshadow computer programs.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote hypothetical programs for the Analytical Engine, saying, “A
new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis.” For her work, Ada is
often considered the world’s first programmer. The Analytical Engine would inspire, arguably, the first
generation of computer scientists, who incorporated many of Babbage’s ideas in their machines. This is
why Babbage is often considered the "father of computing". So by the end of the 19th century,
computing devices were used for special purpose tasks in the sciences and engineering, but rarely seen
in business, government or domestic life. However, the US government faced a serious problem for its
1890 census that demanded the kind of efficiency that only computers could provide.
The US Constitution requires that a census be conducted every ten years, for the purposes of distributing
federal funds, representation in congress, and good stuff like that. And by 1880, the US population was
booming, mostly due to immigration. That census took seven years to manually compile and by the time it
was completed, it was already out of date – and it was predicted that the 1890 census would take 13 years
to compute. That’s a little problematic when it’s required every decade! The Census bureau turned to
Herman Hollerith, who had built a tabulating machine. His machine was “electro-mechanical” – it used
traditional mechanical systems for keeping count, like Leibniz’s Step Reckoner –– but coupled them with
electrically-powered components. Hollerith’s machine used punch cards which were paper cards with a
grid of locations that can be punched out to represent data. Hollerith’s machine was roughly 10x faster than
manual tabulations, and the Census was completed in just two and a half years - saving the census office
millions of dollars. Businesses began recognizing the value of computing, and saw its potential to boost
profits by improving labor- and data-intensive tasks, like accounting, insurance appraisals, and inventory
management. To meet this demand, Hollerith founded The Tabulating Machine Company, which later
merged with other machine makers in 1924 to become The International Business Machines Corporation
or IBM - which you’ve probably heard of.

These electro-mechanical “business machines” were a huge success, transforming commerce and
government, and by the mid-1900s, the explosion in world population and the rise of globalized trade
demanded even faster and more flexible tools for processing data, setting the stage for digital computers.

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WHAT IS A COMPUTER?
A computer is an electronic device, operating under the control of instructions (software) stored in its
own memory, that can accept data (input), process the data according to specified rules, produce
information (output), and store the information for future use. Computers contain many electric,
electronic, and mechanical components known as hardware.

What Makes a Computer, a Computer?

As humans, we've always built tools to help us solve problems. Over time, people began to wonder if a
machine could be designed and built to help us with the thinking work we do, like solving equations or
tracking the stars in the sky. Rather than moving or manipulating physical things like dirt and stone, these
machines would need to be designed to manipulate information. As the pioneers of computer science
explored how to design a thinking machine, they realized that it had to perform four different tasks. It would
need to take input, store information process it and then output the results. Now this might sound simple,
but these four things are common to all computers. That's what makes a computer a computer.

First, we're going to talk about input. This is my favorite because what input is the stuff that the world does
or that you do that makes the computer do stuff. You can tell computers what to do with the keyboard, you
can tell them what to do with the mouse, the microphone, the camera. And now if you're wearing a computer
on your wrist, it might listen to your heartbeat or in your car, it might be listening to what the car is doing.
And a touchscreen can actually sense your finger, and it takes that as input on what it's doing. All these
different inputs give a computer information, which is then stored in memory. A computer's processor takes
information from memory. It manipulates it or changes it using an algorithm, which is just a series of
commands. And then it sends the processed information back to be stored in memory again. This continues
until the processed information is ready to be output. How a computer outputs information depends on
what the computer is designed to do. A computer display can show text, photos, videos, or interactive
games -- even virtual reality! The output of a computer may even include signals to control a robot. And,
when computers connect over the Internet, the output from one computer becomes the input to another,
and vice versa. Across all computers, regardless of the different types of technology they use, they're
always doing those same four things. They take in information, they store it as data, they process it, and
then they output the results.

Hardware and Software

When you look inside a computing device you see a bunch of circuits, chips, wires, speakers, plugs, and all
sorts of other stuff. This is the hardware. But what you don't see is the software. Software is all of the
computer programs, or code, running on the computer. Software can be anything from apps and games to
webpages and the data science software.

Software refers to the intangible parts of a computer, the parts that can't be touched. This includes the
instructions that control how the hardware functions, the applications running on the computer, and the
data stored on the computer.

Hardware includes all of the physical parts that make up a computer such as the monitor and the central
processing unit, that keeps data moving. There are various types of computers that you may encounter,
but they all share the same fundamental purpose of processing and storing information.

But how do the hardware and the software interact with one another? Let's start at looking at a computer's
central processing unit, or CPU. The CPU is the master chip that controls all the other parts of the
computer. A CPU needs to do different things so inside it has smaller, simpler parts that handle specific
tasks. It has circuits to do simple math and logic. It has other circuits to send and receive information to and
from different parts of the computer. The real magic of the CPU is how it knows which circuits to use and
when to use them. The CPU receives simple commands that tell it which circuit to use to do a specific job.
For example, an "add" command tells the CPU to use its outer circuit to calculate a new number. And then

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the "store" command tells the CPU to use a different circuit to save that result into memory. Just like
numbers, all of these simple commands can be represented in binary ones and zeros or on and off electrical
signals. The binary commands are stored in memory and the CPU fetches and executes them in sequence
one after the other. This sequence of commands is, in fact, a very simple computer program.

Binary code is the most basic form of software and it controls all the hardware of a computer. These days,
nobody writes software in binary. It would take forever! Today, the software we write looks more like natural
language. Programming languages like these let you type in commands in something that looks a lot like
English. To draw a rectangle on the screen, you just need a single command. This high-level command is
converted into hundreds, or thousands, of simpler binary commands that the CPU understands. Software
tells the CPU what to do, but when you're listening to music, and browsing the web, and chatting with a
friend, your computer is running multiple pieces of software all at once.

So, how do all of these programs get on the computer in the first place, and how can the CPU run them all
at once?
To find out we'll have to take a look at the operating system (OS). The operating system of the computer
is the master program that manages how software gets to use the hardware of the computer. For example,
Bill Gates helped create the Windows operating system that runs on most personal computers. The
operating system is a program with special abilities that let it control the other software on the computer.
It lets you install new programs by loading them into your computer's memory. It decides when a program
is run by the central processing unit, and whether that program can access the computer's input and output
devices. And when you think your computer is running many programs at once, in reality, it's the operating
system that's quickly switching between programs sharing that CPU for fractions of a second. Inside every
computer is an operating system managing software that controls the computer's hardware. The software
is a series of commands made of simple binary code, and that binary code is just electrical signals flowing
through billions of tiny circuits.

Computers have the potential to do all kinds of amazing things. But the only thing that makes the computer
smart, or useful, is you. When you learn to code you get to define the problem you want to solve, and write
the software that turns those ideas into reality. That gives you the power to build things that matter to you,
your community, and the world.

There are many operating systems provided by many companies in the world. Each operating system is
designed to work on specific types of devices. For example:
• Windows is designed by Microsoft. It is a family of operating systems that can run on a variety of PCs
and laptops. We will use the Windows 10 version of this operating system for demos in this course.
• MacOS is designed by Apple Inc. and works on Apple's Macintosh computers like the MacBook.
• iOS is designed by Apple Inc. and works on Apple's mobile devices like iPhone, iPod, and iPad devices.
• Android is designed by Google and works mainly on touchscreen mobile devices like smartphones and
tablets.
• Chrome OS is designed by Google and works on Chromebook devices.

Input
Input is any data or instructions that are used by a computer. They can come directly from you or from
other sources.
Input devices are: Keyboard, mouse, game controllers, microphone, stylus, scanner, webcams, etc.

Output
Output is processed data or information. Output typically takes the form of text, graphics, photos, audio,
and/or video.
Output devices are: Monitor, projector, printer, speakers, headphones, UHDTV, etc.

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TYPES OF COMPUTERS
Supercomputers are the most powerful type of computer. These machines are special, high-capacity
computers used by very large organizations. Supercomputers are typically used to process massive
amounts of data. For example, they are used to analyze and predict worldwide weather patterns. This 2020,
Japan unveiled the world’s fastest supercomputer named ‘Fugaku’ beating the previous record of ‘Summit’
from the US.

Mainframe computers occupy specially wired, air-conditioned rooms. Although not nearly as powerful as
supercomputers, mainframe computers are capable of great processing speeds and data storage. For
example, insurance companies use mainframes to process information about millions of policyholders.

Servers are computers with processing capabilities less powerful than a mainframe computer yet more
powerful than a personal computer. A server is a computer dedicated to providing one or more services to
other computers or devices on a network. Services provided by servers include storing content and
controlling access to hardware, software, and other resources on a network.

Personal computers, also known as PCs, are the least powerful, yet the most widely used and fastest-
growing type of computer. There are five types of personal computers: desktops, laptops, tablets,
smartphones, and wearables.

Desktop computers are small enough to fit on top of or alongside a desk yet are too big to carry
around.

Laptop computers, also known as notebook computers, are portable and lightweight and fit into
most briefcases.

Tablets, also known as tablet computers, are smaller, lighter, and generally less powerful than
laptops. Like a laptop, tablets have a flat screen but typically do not have a standard keyboard. Instead,
tablets typically use a virtual keyboard that appears on the screen and is touch-sensitive.

Smartphones are the most widely used handheld computers. Smartphones are cell phones with
wireless connections to the Internet and processing capabilities. Other mobile computers include wearable
devices like Apple Watch.

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REFERENCES
Campbell, J. T., Freund, S. M., Frydenberg, M., Last, M. Z., & Pratt, P. J. (2017). Shelly Cashman Series Discovering
Computers & Microsoft Office 365 & Office 2016: A fundamental combined approach. Cengage Learning.
CrashCourse. (2017, February 22). Early computing: crash course computer science #1 [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5nskjZ_GoI&feature=youtu.be
Code.org. (2018, January 30). How computers work: What makes a computer, a computer? [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCq8-xTH7jA&feature=youtu.be
Code.org. (2018, January 30). How computers work: hardware and software. [Video]. Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnyFYiK2rSY&feature=youtu.be
Microsoft. (2020). Microsoft digital literacy course: Work with Computers. [Online Course]. Microsoft Digital Literacy
Home. https://digital-literacy-courses-en-us.azurewebsites.net/en-
us/digitalliteracy/newcourses/01_work_with_computers/course/SCO1/onlineLauncher.htm
O'Leary, T., O'Leary, L., & O'Leary, D. (2019). Computing essentials 2019. McGraw-Hill Education.

Contact Me If You Have Questions

You can email me at: [email protected] with subject line “COMP1 Inquiry”.

You may text me at: 09216801133.

You may find me on Facebook or message me on Messenger through:

https://www.facebook.com/iamjoshie/

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