Throughout history, there have been intriguing references in ancient texts to devices and mechanisms that bear a striking resemblance to modern computers. These descriptions, while often shrouded in ...

The world watched in astonishment last week as NASA delivered its one-ton Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars with astonishing precision, hitting a target area just 12 x 4 miles wide after eight ...

The calculator, dubbed the Antikythera Mechanism, was discovered in 1901 at the site of a shipwreck off a Greek Island with the same name. The breakthrough in determining the mechanism's true purpose, ...

Researchers have deciphered the use of an ancient computer. It was apparently developed to help farmers plant crops on time, and to schedule religious festivals. This week, the journal Nature reported ...

The history of computers goes back over 200 years. At first theorized by mathematicians and entrepreneurs, during the 19th century mechanical calculating machines were designed and built to solve the ...

A computer that processes analog data is known as an analog computer. Analog computers store information in physical quantities in a continuous format and use measurements to perform computation.

Fresh research about ripples in the fabric of spacetime suggests a nearly 2,000-year-old cosmic calculator followed the lunar calendar instead of the solar one. The hand-powered "Antikythera mechanism ...

A Greek shipwreck holds the remains of an intricate bronze machine that turns out to be the world's first computer. (This program is no longer available for streaming.) In 1900, a storm blew a ...