ABSTRACT
Computers were originally designed to process quantitative information, but have evolved into machines that also store information, process text and graphics, and receive and transmit information. Modem electronic information-processing machines have about the same relationship to the early computers as phonetic writing has to ice age depictions. The French term l' ordinateur, which originally referred to a device for ordering threads in weaving, more accurately characterizes information-processing machines than does the term computer. But it is unlikely that the term computer will be dislodged in the near future among English speakers as the common term for information-processing machines.
