Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Generation of Computers
Generation of Computers
Rapid changes
Four generations over 50 years
1951, UNIVAC
Eckert and Mauchly completed the first
commercial computer in the USA – the
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)
First computer built for business
Short Code - A set of instructions called
Short Code is developed for the UNIVAC.
Programmers
The First Generation
1951, SAGE - Semi Automatic Ground Environment was
developed.
IBM built the SAGE computers and became leaders in
real-time applications and used the technology of
Whirlwind.
SAGE computers were used in an early U.S. air defense
system. They were fully deployed in 1963, that consisted
of 27 centers throughout North America, each with a
duplexed AN/FSQ-7 computer system containing over
50,000 vacuum tubes, weighing 250 tons and occupying
an acre of floor space.
SAGE was the first large computer network to provide
man-machine interaction in real time.
The First Generation
1952, EDVAC-
Electronic Discreet
Variable Computer
– John Von Neumann,
designed with a central
control unit which would
calculate and output all
mathematical and logical
problems and a memory
which could be written to
and read. (RAM in
modern terms) which
would store programs
and data.
The First Generation
1953, IBM 701
– The 701 was formally announced
on May 21, 1952. It was the unit of
the overall 701 Data Processing
System in which actual
calculations were performed. That
activity involved 274 assemblies
executing all the system's
computing and control functions
by means of electronic pulses
emitted at speeds ranging up to
one million a second.
1953, The Whirlwind
– Whirlwind was a large scale,
general purpose digital computer
begun at the Servomechanisms
Laboratory of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in 1946.
The Second Generation
1959-1964 Storage
Transistor
– Removable disk pack
(1954)
– Smaller – Magnetic tape
– No warm-up time Programming languages
– Less energy – Assembly language
– Less heat – FORTRAN (1954)
– Faster – COBOL(1959)
– More reliable
Humans communicate
with computers in the
language they use on a
daily basis
The Fifth Generation
Robotics
Computer-controlled
device that can
physically manipulate its
surroundings