ELECTRONIC PERIOD

- The last period in ICT history.

- Started in the 1940s and continues up to the present.
- The highlight of this period is focused in the advent of solid state devices
or electronic devices.

FOUR MAIN EVENTS IN THIS PERIOD:

 THE LATE VACUUM TUBES PERIOD
 THE TRANSISTOR PERIOD
 THE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS PERIOD
 COMPUTER PROCESSOR PERIOD

The latter period of Vacuum Tube machine is the start of the electronic period.

Vacuum tube
- A glass tube that has its gas removed, creating a vacuum. Vacuum tubes
contain electrodes for controlling electron flow and were used in early
computers as a switch or an amplifier.
-
ELECTRONIC NUMERICAL INTEGRATOR AND COMPUTER (ENIAC)
- Also called as the “GIANT BRAIN”.
- The first electronic and general purpose computer.
- Built in 1943-45 at the Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania for
the War.
- Was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for
the United States Army.
- The ENIAC was not a stored-program computer; it is "better described as a
collection of electronic adding machines and other arithmetic units
- A big machine that occupied an area of 167 meter. Aside from its big size,
its processing speed is slower than those of machines today.

TRANSISTOR
- Invented in 1947.
- An electronic device with properties and functions similar to vacuum
tubes, but its lighter and faster.
- A semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals and
electrical power.
- It is the foundation of every electronic devices today. In fact, you can see
transistor in every electronic device.
- One-third of the total size of the vacuum tube but it transmit information
faster.

INTEGRATED CIRCUIT (IC)

- Introduced by Jack Kilby an American engineer.
 - A device that is composed of a group of transistor and circuit elements
compressed in a single package.

The advent of development of integrated circuits ushered in the period of

powerful processors. ICs are used in processing devices, and processors are
constructed in IC forms. Personal Computers then used these processors to
deliver user applications. From this time up to today, computers are evolving
from basic Textual Interfaces to Graphical User Interface.

Olivetti Programma 101

- Also known as Perottina or P101, is the first commercial programmable
"desktop computer".
- Invented by the Italian engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto.
- Able to calculate the basic four arithmetic functions (addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division), plus square root, absolute value,
and fractional part.

IBM 5150
- Was introduced on August 12, 1981.
- Created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don
Estridge.

Reference:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/general-purpose-computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/eniac.html
https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/v/vacuumtu.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programma_101
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer