The word compute is a verb: to calculate or to reckon (a figureor amount).In its original sense (before the 1940s) it was an activity thatonly humans did, sometimes with the assistance of mechanicaldevices (e.g. mechanical calculator, slide rule, sector, abacus,sandboard) but more often by hand (e.g. with pencil and paper) orin their heads.Only after the development of the automatic electronicprogrammable digital computer (in the late 1940s) did it begin toacquire its modern sense as an activity that an electronic machinedid.