COMPUTER

COMPUTER (c. 1945). Information is entered, by one of many possible channels, into a machine that converts it into digital impulses that can then be manipulated in a variety of ways. Such information may be words, as many of us enter these on word processors; it may also be pictures or sounds. In music, computers now enable composers to create on their cathode-ray tubes (aka CRTs) works that can be transformed, thanks to digital-to-analog conversion, into audiotape that may be played back…