One cannot know where they are going until they know where they have been. The advancing pace of technology calls for a brief introduction and a explanation upon the most basic principles of computing.  Two Computers in specific will be discussed, Colossus and IBM's Mark 1.
        At the lowest level of the computer lies the transistor, by arranging these transistors, or in earlier computers vacuum tubes, in different combinations early programmers were able to create a crude processor.  The networks of transistors are called logic gates, many different kinds of gates can be created, an AND gate, an OR gate, a NOT gate, and many others.  These gates divide a problem or a question into two parts a true part and a false part, represented by 1's and 0's. An AND gate functions in this way; if one input is true and the other input is true then the output is true, if one input is true and the other input is false then there is no output.  It is much like playing twenty questions.  A broad question is divided into two parts, again the outcome is divided into two more parts, eventually a specific solution can be divides form a very vague question.

          Binary, a numerical system based on powers of 2, evolved because of the two part nature of the processor.  Soon the developers had extended the binary, or machine code from just representing problem to representing alpha-numeric characters, letters and numbers.  Now the computer could manipulate all data types, and herein lay their power.  The computer world was poised to begin in a new direction and emerge from the dark closet of theory.
          In the early 1940's a British spy station began to receive encrypted German communications, they quickly learned that if they could decode it the allied commanders would know where their enemy was going and could place their men out of harms way.  The original

code called "enigma" was quickly broken but the tremendous amount of time it took to decode it by hand signalled that their had to be a batter way.  A British mathematics genius developed an electromechanical device that would cycle though all of the possibilities and output the decoded string.  Station X could now provide the allies with up to date information.  The Germans quickly upped the auntie, they devised a the Lorenz cipher a much more complex cipher then the previous one.  The British were now back where they began.  As a response another brilliant man devised a new process to decode the German communications. And as a result of a German slip they were able

to decode the German messages once again, the time it took to decode one message had ballooned.  A young student from oxford stepped forward, confident that he could again make the station productive.  He created the worlds first computer, containing over 1000 networked vacuum tubes in a colossus machine.  Much smaller machines had been made but this giant a leap had never been thought possible.  It was and soon more than 20 of these machines were ticking away decoding German communications, often before the intended recipient could.  Sadly at the end of the war British intelligence scrapped all of the the colossi and destroyed the blueprints and colossus was resigned to history.

        Enter the Americans.  Shortly before e the war ended Scientists and engineers from IBM and Harvard University Created the worlds first pocket calculator.  Weighing in at almost five tons and occupying fifty feet of floor space IBM's Mark One was the last significant advance in computing for a long time.  Using up six seconds for multiplication and twice as much division this tabulator had much less computing power than most of today's digital wristwatches, you wouldn't want to do square roots on this machine.  Soon many universities had their own "super powerful" computers and computing remained in the hands of the super rich, it took a long time for the next significant advance to occur in computing, again spearheaded by IBM.