← 💻 Technology · usually met in Std 6-12
A machine that stores numbers and follows instructions very quickly. Everything else — text, pictures, sound, video — is numbers underneath.
At the bottom are switches that are on or off, which is why computers count in binary. Eight bits make a byte, and a byte can hold 256 different values — enough for a letter. A picture is a grid of numbers for colour, a sound is a long list of numbers for air pressure. The processor fetches an instruction, carries it out, and fetches the next, billions of times a second.
Memory comes in layers: fast and small close to the processor, slower and larger further away, with storage at the bottom keeping things when the power goes off. Software is instructions written as data. An operating system is the program that manages the hardware so other programs do not each have to.
Want to see it moving? Search YouTube for “How a computer works” ↗ — we send you to the search rather than to one video, because a link to one video eventually rots.
This entry was written for Star Student in our own words — it is a summary, not a source. Here is where the people who actually hold these facts keep them. Go and check.
Your own textbook ↗Balbharati publishes the textbooks free to read online. Your chapter is the thing to check first — an encyclopedia is a summary, and the syllabus is the syllabus.Last gone through: 1 October 2026 · How these entries are written
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