Charles Babbage was an English inventor in the early 1800s who taught at Cambridge University and invented a mechanical computer equivalent to modern digital computers. The document then outlines the five generations of modern computers from 1945 to present, describing the technological advances from vacuum tubes to integrated circuits that defined each generation. It concludes by questioning what changes could define the future fifth generation of computing and lists some pioneering individuals in the field of computing like Babbage, Zuse, von Neumann, Turing, and Jobs.