CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Background information from creation shows that there has been consistent search by man to improve and raise the standard of his existence. The ever-increasing research has been necessitated and moved by the simple need to address the challenges posed by his environments.
As a result of this need, a number of inventions have been made in virtually every field of human life. The computer system is one of the most evident of such inventions. It is a tool specifically made for computable problems. In most areas, it is an indispensable tool. The knowledge of the ability to use the computer have become so important and indesperate that there is new ever need to teach it in our tertiary institutions.
The history or the modern computer date back to the nineteenth century, when in 1834 in England, an English Scientist named Charles Babbage developed a program controlled mechanical digital computer in-cooperating a complete arithmetic unit.
The first generation of computer include the types discovered by Babbage, it performs operations in predetermined sequence, Babbage used cardboard holes punched into them for present all types of information to the machine.
The second generations of computer was based on punched card machines, the USN Census of 1890 utilized this technology. The third generation of computer resurfaced in the terties which was mainly for commercials, it was called UNIVAC. I designed by Eckert and Mandy, IBM 360/370 series and many more also included.
The late seventies came up with well-known personal computer like Radio shark, Apell 11 113mpc, this group could be classified as the fourth generation of computer.
The fifth generation of computer influenced the business community, this came in with a lot of software. We have computer with 80286, 80486, 80586, Intel Chips. They were of enormous speed and fund their way into every office and institution.
The latest and sixth generation of computer is the Pentium technology. They are very fast, when computer first came to Nigeria,
our colonial masters were in control of most of the firms that could afford one. As such the trend was to purchase foreign software packages. The fact that, there were few software manufactures in the country did not help matters at all. Computers were born and raised by armed forced and popularized by the consumer economy. But their greater in value may prove to be neither military nor commercial with the cold was recording. It is now apparent that we are controlled by two or more over whelming challenges. Computers were first applied to massive Mathematical problems for which the military wanted answers such as explaining the Terrence, greater by atomic explosions. Nowadays, the labour markets, it selective preferring candidates who posses the skill to use the computer. To prepare students on the new demands of the world labour market, institutions now introduce computer science in their curriculum.