1. The world's first electronic computers were built during World War II in the 1940's. The computer built by the United States was called ENIAC (Electronic Numberical Intergrator and Calculator). ENIAC was much slower than the computer you use at home, school or at the office, it was also much, much larger. ENIAC was the size of a building (80 feet long, 8 1/2 feet high and several feet wide). During WWII the English also built a computer called the Colossus. These computers were built by the military and were used to help us win the war against the Germans.

   The Germans had a design for a computer during WWII but they never built it. They thought they would win the war and didn't want to spend money on something they didn't think they needed.

2. The first computer for commercial use (that means for sale to anyone who could afford it) was built in 1951 and cost $1 million dollars ($1,000,000). Most computers today cost about $2 thousand dollars ($2,000).

3. Computers run on electricity, they are DIGITAL machines. Digital means that they understand on and off. Imagine that the inside of a computer contains millions of little light bulbs that are turned off and on. The computer looks at all the lights to see if they are off or on. The order of the lights and how many are off and on means something to the computer.

4. The language of computers is BINARY. The binary alphabet has just two letters, (binary means two). The letters of binary are 1 (one) and 0 (zero). An on light=1 and an off light=0. Each 1 or 0 of binary language is called a BIT. The binary language looks like this:
   11000101 10010000 00111011
   The 1's and 0's can be in any order and each different combination means something different.

   The bits (1's and 0's) in the binary language are usually put together in groups of eight (just like in the illustration above). Each group of 8 bits is called a BYTE.

5. If you would like to learn more about binary go to the More Computer Fun - Binary Fact Sheet. .

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