what are 4 significant events about computer history and how they affect society today?

Question

I know this is dumb but I really need help, this is a research paper my girlfriend got and she asked to to do it for her since she has an *** load of finals....and yeah...can someone point me in the right direction on how I can accomplish this and make it sound like collage material.

Answer 1

Look up information on the following:

--The Jacquard loom. This was a loom where the patterns woven into the fabric were controlled by punch cards. This was important because even though the loom itself wasn't a computer, the idea that you could store information on a punch card carried over into the punch cards of the early 1900s and led to the development of storage devices.
--The Altair computer (1975). This was the first "computer" that people could buy and take home. It wasn't much - it actually looked more like something out of the Batcave from the TV series, but it introduced the world to personal computing. Prior to this, computers were things found in universities or government agencies - not in the household.
--The Apple Lisa and Macintosh. These two introduced the world to the graphical user interface (GUI), which is what we're used to seeing today. These two also made exclusive use of the mouse, well before the mouse became standard equipment on the PC.
--The IBM Personal Computer. This became the standard on which computers today are based. This was revolutionary becuase, along with the development of software, it allowed people to do some productive things with their computers (the development of Word and Excel also took place around the same time as the PC's release, so both helped to push computing into what it is today).