The term Computer, originally meant a person capable of performing numerical calculations with the help of a mechanical computing

device. The evolution of computers started way back in the late 1930s. Binary arithmetic is at the core of the computers of all times. History of computers dates back to the invention of a mechanical adding machine in 1642. ABACUS, an early computing tool, invention of logarithm by John Napier and the invention of slide rules by William Oughtred were significant events in the evolution of computers from these early computing devices.

The abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool used primarily in parts of Asia for erforming arithmetic processes. Today, abaci are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal.

Napier's bones is an abacus created by John Napier for calculation of products and quotients of numbers that was based on Arab mathematics and lattice multiplication used by Matrakci Nasuh in the Umdet-ul Hisab[1] and Fibonacci writing in the Liber Abaci.Napier published his version of rods in a work printed in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the end of 1617 entitled Rabdologi.

The slide rule, also known colloquially as a slipstick,[1] is a mechanical analog computer. The slide rule is used primarily for multiplication and division, and also for functions such as roots, logarithms and trigonometry, but is not normally used for addition or subtraction.

A Difference Engine is an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers.

The Analytical Engine, an important step in the history of computers, is a design for a mechanical general-purpose computer first described by English mathematician Charles Babbage in 1837., a design for a mechanical calculator.

The IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), called the Mark I by Harvard University,[1] was an electro-mechanical computer. The electromechanical ASCC was devised by Howard H. Aiken, built at IBM and shipped to Harvard in February 1944. It began computations for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships in May and was officially presented to the university on August 7, 1944.[2] It was very reliable, much more so than early electronic computers.