Babbage's first attempt at a mechanical computing device, the Difference Engine, was a special-purpose calculator designed to tabulate logarithms and trigonometric functions by evaluating finite differences to create approximating polynomials.

The Atanasoff – Berry Computer ( ABC ) was the first electronic digital computing device.

J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the first to patent a digital computing device, the ENIAC.

In computing, memory refers to the physical devices used to store programs ( sequences of instructions ) or data ( e. g. program state information ) on a temporary or permanent basis for use in a computer or other digital electronic device.

In computing, a mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface.

Except for the Antikythera mechanism, an " out of the time " astronomical device, development of computing tools arrived in the beginning of the 17th century: Geometric-military compass by Galileo, Logarithms and Napier Bones by Napier, slide rule by Edmund Gunter.

In digital logic and computing, a counter is a device which stores ( and sometimes displays ) the number of times a particular event or process has occurred, often in relationship to a clock signal.

* 1888 – Statistician Herman Hollerith installs his computing device at the United States War Department.

The underlying principle was noted by the inventor of the first programmable computing device design:

Colossus was the world's first electronic programmable computing device.

* The T interface is a serial interface between a computing device and a terminal adapter, which is the digital equivalent of a modem.

* Mercedes-Euklid, an early 20th-century computing device

In computing, a pointing device gesture or mouse gesture is a way of combining pointing device movements and clicks which the software recognizes as a specific command.

1143 ), Gerbert got the idea of the computing device of the abacus from a Spanish Arab.

In computing, an image scanner is a device that optically scans images ( printed text, handwriting, or an object ) and converts it to a digital image which is transferred to a computer.

The Turing machine is not intended as practical computing technology, but rather as a hypothetical device representing a computing machine.

Turing completeness is significant in that every real-world design for a computing device can be simulated by a universal Turing machine.

In many computing contexts, " TTY " has become the name for any text terminal, such as an external console device, a user dialing in to the system on a modem on a serial port device, a printing or graphical computer terminal on a computer's serial port or the RS-232 port on a USB-to-RS-232 converter attached to a computer's USB port, or even a terminal emulator application in the window system using a pseudo terminal device.

Predating digital computing, the Sensorama was a mechanical device, which reportedly still functions today.

In computing, a class driver is a type of hardware device driver that can operate a large number of different devices of a broadly similar type.

The presence of an easy-to-learn language such as BASIC on these early personal computers allowed small business owners to develop their own custom application software, leading to widespread use of these computers in businesses that previously did not have access to computing technology.

Bioinformatics also deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, structural biology, software engineering, data mining, image processing, modeling and simulation, discrete mathematics, control and system theory, circuit theory, and statistics.

Thus, computing includes designing and building hardware and software systems for a wide range of purposes ; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information ; doing scientific studies using computers ; making computer systems behave intelligently ; creating and using communications and entertainment media ; finding and gathering information relevant to any particular purpose, and so on.

For example, an information systems specialist will view computing somewhat differently from a software engineer.

Application software applies the power of a particular computing platform or system software to a particular purpose.

As more and more programs enter the realm of firmware, and the hardware itself becomes smaller, cheaper and faster as predicted by Moore's law, elements of computing first considered to be software, join the ranks of hardware.

Advances in computing power and software for manipulation of digital media have dramatically affected the way computer music is generated and performed.

As with every software system, a DBMS that operates in a faulty computing environment is prone to failures of many kinds.

As with every software system, a DBMS that operates in a faulty computing environment is prone to failures of many kinds.

* The Information Processing Techniques Office ( IPTO ) focused on inventing the networking, computing, and software technologies vital to ensuring DOD military superiority.

* Event ( computing ), a software message indicating that something has happened, such as a keystroke or mouse click

* Electric Sheep-open source distributed computing software

* Flash Translation Layer, a software layer used in computing to support normal file systems with flash memory

Scott Kurowski wrote the Internet PrimeNet Server that supports the research to demonstrate Entropia-distributed computing software, a company he founded in 1997.

* The hobbyist home computing community, focusing on hardware in the late 1970s ( e. g. the Homebrew Computer Club ) and on software ( video games, software cracking, the demoscene ) in the 1980s / 1990s.

That is, people who apply the creative attitude of software hackers in fields other than computing.

WinTPC is available for software assurance customers and relies on cloud computing in a business network.

The end of the 20th century and early years of the 21st century saw rapid advancements in telecommunications, computing hardware and software, and data encryption.

Logical controls ( also called technical controls ) use software and data to monitor and control access to information and computing systems.

Kermit is a computer file transfer / management protocol and a set of communications software tools primarily used in the early years of personal computing in the 1980s ; it provides a consistent approach to file transfer, terminal emulation, script programming, and character set conversion across many different computer hardware and OS platforms.

In computing terminology, a macro virus is a virus that is written in a macro language: that is to say, a language built into a software application such as a word processor.