Computers are incredibly useful tools, and have transformed business, industry and education beyond recognition. Computers can be used as door stops, draft excluders, very big paper-weights and for crushing large, rectangular groups of ants. What may surprise you is that they have even more uses if you connect them to an electricity supply and switch them on.

The term ‘computer’ literally means something that computes or, in layman’s terms, adds things up and jiggles them about a little. If we are to be extremely pedantic, then, the first computer was the Chinese man Zhe-Ning Feng who, in the second millennium BC, became the first person to add things up when he worked out that if he had fourteen grains of rice and another twelve grains of rice, he still wouldn’t have enough to go with his king prawn chop suey.

The first computer in the sense that we understand them (as a giant whirring machines with flashing lights that break down a lot) was the Megatron XIII, invented by Simon Beardmore in 1954 at the University of Snowdonia, Bristol. Megatrons I through XII had been simple teas maids, but XIII had been designed to be the most powerful beverage machine known to man or beast. The machine grew from an original sketch drawn on the back of a beer mat by Beardmore when he was high on fig biscuits (see figure 1 below), to a colossal metal monstrosity that occupied six square miles and extended some thirty feet underground. Amongst the materials used in its construction were one hundred and thirteen miles of string, forty-two tons of steel, seventy-six thousand four hundred and fourteen valves and the fur of a three-year-old squirrel from Portsmouth. Unfortunately, due to the poor reliability of the valves, the Megatron XIII never actually worked. The longest sustained period of operation for the Megatron was a meagre 43.7 seconds, the machine coughing out a piece of tickertape that read ‘??? INVALID SWEETNER ERROR. RUNTIME ERROR 21: TEABAG TYPE MISMATCH’ before exploding, killing nine undergraduate students and a small pigeon in the process.


 

The Megatron XIII started a trend that continued for many years of building computers that were truly gargantuan in size. The apex of this trend was brought about by the completion of the RoosterMeister 8000, a NASA experiment that had to be built in outer space in order to avoid tipping the Earth off its axis. The RoosterMeister was approximately the size of Lithuania, and blocked out the light of the Sun for large parts of South America for almost three years. The RoosterMeister was eventually dismantled when it was discovered to be useless, since the power cord was not long enough to stretch all the way from space to Cape Canaveral. Since those early days, computers have evolved into sophisticated tools that can be stylish items of home furniture as well as big beige boxes that all the elegance and aesthetic appeal of a Tampax machine.

Everyone has a computer in their home today, even those who don’t realise it. A vast litany of modern household appliances contain microprocessors (lit. ‘small thingys’), including toasters, television sets, washing machines, cats, radios and old people. If you don’t believe that your home contains a myriad of microprocessors, just walk around and dismantle all your electronic machinery. You’ll easily be able to spot the microprocessors because they’re so small that you won’t be able to see them.

The real computer revolution in the past decade has been the Internet, which is short for Interspatial Networking. The Internet is a collection of computers throughout the world that are connected to each other using bits of wire and long stretches of hemp. These computers talk to each other in a secret language of ones and zeroes that only they can understand. This language is called ‘binary’ and is the basis of computing. It is important to note that English computers speak a different variety of binary to their American cousins, who often put ones where there should be zeroes for no apparent good reason at all.

The Internet is a huge repository of information, none of which is true. There are approximately 21 billion pages on the Internet or World Wide Web (the two being exactly the same thing), of which 80% are pornographic, 10% are Star Trek-related, and the remaining 10% are both. Given such a wealth of information, finding exactly what you want on the Internet can be very difficult. Using a search engine, you should enter a series of carefully-selected keywords. A list of sites will magically appear on your monitor thanks to the little pixies that live inside. At least seven of these sites will be of no use whatsoever, and all the really useful-looking ones will give you the error ‘HTTP 404: Page not found.’ No-one is yet completely certain what this means.

Self-Assessment Questions:

1) An essential item of modern-day computing is the mouse. Why is the mouse so called?
[15 marks, or 4s 6d in old money]

2) Can you convert the binary number 1011110101010101010 into hexadecimal?
[2 notches on the bed-post]

3) A printer is an example of a computer peripheral. Name three others.
[5 suspicious-looking white marks]

4) Your computer displays a fatal exception error and smoke begins to pour from the air vents at the back. What do you do? Assume for the purposes of this question that the Bat-signal is broken.
[10 Marks & Spencers' ready-cooked chicken breasts.]

Question Answers:

1) Because originally real mice were attached to computers. They were nailed to little roller-skates and as the user moved them across a smooth surface, electronic impulses were sent to the CPU via the mouse’s tail. This practice was eventually brought to an end by the reduced manufacturing costs of plastic mice and complaints from the RSPCA, Mary Whitehouse, the Queen and the entire population of French-Canada.

2) Yes, the correct answer is E082F479F843300. The real question is: why the hell would anyone want to?

3) Suitable answers would include: a scanner; a dongle; a mouse; an inflatable Bill Gates doll (with or without vibrating orifices); a Bionic Man; a keyboard; a graphics tablet; or a giant killer robot with spikes all down its back, that shoots laser beams from its eyes and stomps around going ‘rooooaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh’. The answer ‘another printer’ is not acceptable.

4) Throw a bucket of water (room temperature, not ice-cold) over the computer at once, and then immediately call the emergency services and request a fire engine and a qualified exorcist. Never, under any circumstances, attempt to open the case of your PC and tamper with the insides. No user-serviceable parts lie within, and many computer cases are home to small tribes of miniature sabre-toothed monkeys that do not appreciate their privacy being disturbed. Every year 500 people in the UK alone die from miniature-monkey related injuries. Make sure you’re not one of them.