Bits,bytes and the Byzantinist: databases reviewed

Abstract

A computer is a machine which can receive, store, manipulate and yield up information. The use of computers can be traced back to c.1812 when Charles Babbage conceived his first main idea for automatic computation, but it is clear that development has been rapid and widespread especially in the last 20 years. Computers were originally developed for performing numerical calculations. However, although most forms of information can be translated into numbers, it is important to realise that computing today is no longer confined to numerical work. One of the most interesting and significant developments of the use of computers to research and teaching in the humanities is the growing body of material which has been put into machine-readable form. For example, censuses, parish registers, wills and accounts have been input to a computer, increasingly in the form of a structured database.