Introduction to Data Processors

Abstract

The concept of a processor is a familiar one. It is a contrivance into which we put some material and it operates on what we put in, producing at its output some modified, hopefully improved, form of the input material. For instance a meat canning factory is a kind of processor, as is a mill for making paper or grinding corn into flour. More than a century ago, Charles Babbage built a ‘calculating engine’; he called the ‘number crunching’ part of his engine the ‘mill’.