Let's make this idiot-proof: A computer is a machine. Like every machine, it was designed, invented and built to help men take care of some specific tasks in a faster and more comfortable way. In the case of a computer, the task is dealing with information.
Today, a computer is a machine that can process millions of instructions per second, helping man do from simple additions to complex infinitesimal calculations in a fast and more reliable way than if they were done merely with our human, prone-to-mistake brains. That's not all, though. As you already know, computers have been introduced to almost every field of human activity, and they have allowed mankind to give important steps in more fields, organize and process information and also ease human communication, specially since the boom of the Internet.
If you open a computer, you will see a lot of electronic cards, chips and other devices, but let's stay away from complicated explanations —at least by now. A computer computer needs three parts to work: A space to store the sets of instructions it may be requested to run and follow (the disks or drives), a space to process them (the memory and the processor) and devices to interact with its user, taking the input it receives and submitting the results gets (screen, mouse, keyboard, printer, scanner and others).
With all these parts, a computer follows this process: You turn it on and it carries out a set of instructions that will prepare the computer to interact with you. This is called loading and it implies two parts, a start-up check and basic instructions (stored in what is usually called the BIOS) and the loading of an operative system (the most renown these days are Windows and Linux, but there have been and are others like the BASIC, DOS, UNIX, Solaris, among others).
In simple, it loads a file, read it, carries out its instructions and then continues loading the next file it is requested to load or sending an output to any of the devices it is requested to use.
Once the operative system has loaded, the computer is ready to follow your commands. Whatever you do, it will follow the same procedure: Upon receiving your command, it will load the program you have requested to carry out, follow its instructions and give you a result. Next, it will get ready to receive your next command.
A computer stores the information in a disk, in a format which consists of series of ons and offs called bits. Each given number of bits makes a byte (there are systems that work with 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128 bits per byte, and there will be more in the future); and a byte is the minimum unit a computer has to interact with its user. A byte can be understood by a computer as a specific character, blank space or symbol. From there on, the computer uses each combination of bytes to read and interpret an instruction and carry it out. After that, reads the next instruction until the program finishes.
To keep everything tidied —and easier to manage by the user, by the way—, the computer divides the data in files which are stored in folders or directories (what you can see when you open the file manager of your computer). This is called a logical division of information. In physical terms, a computer stores its information in clusters which may be read or written on a disk, in the same ons and offs format explained above.
When you click your mouse or push the a button on your keyboard, you are commanding your computer to obey: "Write A", "select this file", "copy this string of characters" and these are managed by the operative system.
Now, if you want a computer to carry out more complex tasks, you can write and compile an executable file, save it on a disk and then run it whenever you need it.
As for files, a user can execute, read, write, modify, copy, move or erase any of them ad lib; as well as prevent them from being executed, read, written, modified, copied, moved or erased either by hiding them, declaring them read-only or password-protecting them. The user will always have the control of the commands the computer execute. Thus, if you ever have a problem with your computer, it is probably because you gave it a wrong instruction.
To finish with this article, we must say that the idea of building a computer is not new. The ancient abacus was the first machine invented to help man process numeric operations. In the 19th century, a mathematician conceived a machine called Analytical Engine. The first all-electronic computer was built in 1946, and it had more than 15000 tubes, but it could process hundreds of multiplications per minute... nothing compared to current computers.
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