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A transistor computer, now often called a second-generation computer, [ 1] is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The first generation of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, were bulky and unreliable. A second-generation computer, through the late 1950s and 1960s ...
In the first generation, word-oriented computers typically had a single accumulator and an extension, referred to as, e.g., Upper and Lower Accumulator, Accumulator and Multiplier-Quotient (MQ) register. In the second generation, it became common for computers to have multiple addressable accumulators.
Typically, second-generation computers were composed of large numbers of printed circuit boards such as the IBM Standard Modular System, [138] each carrying one to four logic gates or flip-flops. At the University of Manchester, a team under the leadership of Tom Kilburn designed and built a machine using the newly developed transistors instead ...
The fourth generation computers began with the shipment of CPS-1, the first commercial microprocessor microcomputer in 1972 and for the purposes of this list marks the end of the "early" third generation computer era. Note that third generation computers were offered well into the 1990s. The list is organized by delivery year to customers or ...
SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) demonstrated at US NBS in Washington, DC – was the first fully functional stored-program computer in the U.S. May 1950. UK. The Pilot ACE computer, with 800 vacuum tubes, and mercury delay lines for its main memory, became operational on 10 May 1950 at the National Physical Laboratory near London.
A vacuum-tube computer, now termed a first-generation computer, is a computer that uses vacuum tubes for logic circuitry. While the history of mechanical aids to computation goes back centuries, if not millennia, the history of vacuum tube computers is confined to the middle of the 20th century. Lee De Forest invented the triode in 1906.
The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals.
ENIAC (/ ˈ ɛ n i æ k /; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) [1] [2] was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Other computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was the first to have them all.