When Charles Babbage, a professor of Mathematics at Cambridge university, invented the first calculating machine in 1812 he couldn't imagine the situation we find ourselves in today. Nearly everything we do in the world is helped, or even controlled by computers, the complicated descedants of his simple machine. Computers are used more and more often in the world today, for the simple reason that they are far more efficent than human beings. They have much better memories and they can store much information. No man alive can do 500000 sums in one second, but a computer can. In fact, computers can do many of the things we do, but faster and better. They can predict weather, and ever play chess, write poetry or compose music.
