Several transistors can be placed on one chip, increasing miniaturization and reliability by decreasing the number of components to be placed on a printed circuit board. The greatest breakthrough in chip technology came during the early 1970s with the introduction of the first computer memory chips and microprocessor chips, heralding the development of the microcomputer a few years later. The development of computers and digital electronics can be termed a technical revolution. Computers progressed from cumbersome electronic renderings of electromechanical machines to highly flexible and user-friendly machines. Today we use computers to organize words, numbers, and pictures in our homes, schools, offices, stores, theaters, baseball parks, and cars.
All computers work by taking input, processing or storing that input, and returning output.
People instruct the computers what to do. To perform a task, a computer first needs input. The keyboard is the most common input device. A scanner or video camera can deliver information and images to a computer. The computer then interprets and carries out instructions, receives, sends, and stores information using circuit boards.