Googling “How do computers work?”
The real question is how a program instructs a computer what to do.
No page without the word ‘address’ can claim to explain how computers work.
<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer>Wikipedia</a> is the 6th Google entry and the first to talk about addresses.
<a href=http://homepage.cs.uri.edu/faculty/wolfe/book/Readings/Reading04.htm>This</a> may help.
<p><a href=http://www.fastchip.net/howcomputerswork/bookbpdf.pdf>This book</a> starts with circuits.
It proceeds thru a 4 bit processor in almost too much detail.
It presumes an elementary knowledge of electricity.
<p><a href=http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/cpint.htm>This</a> has good and interesting historic information of the sort I would try to write if I had the time.
It goes well beyond the requirements I had in mind.
<p><a href=http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/cp03.htm>This</a> actually describes some real simple programs and the instructions that compose them.
It is slightly more and less than I had in mind.
<p>All together the above references include the basic information on what it means to be a program, and how the hardware ‘understands’ the program.
They are for a variety of audiences.
I had not thought to describe a vacuum tube or transistor but some would like that too.
There are many web sources on analog versions of these, and a few good sources on the digital versions.
<p><a href=../Software/CalcOrder.html>My stuff</a> to be coordinated.
Perhaps we should start from there.
<p>First the <a href=PC.html>Program Counter</a>.
<p><a href=reg.html>This</a> discriminates between sorts of registers.
<br><a href=smmc.html>701 add loop</a>.