Generations

First Generation Computers

August 20, 2009 admin No comments

The first generation computers are started in the year 1946. These computers are called as ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). The first generation computers use the vacuum tubes. Some of them say the first generation computers are started in 1946 with the introduction of EDSAC. The EDSAC is the first stored program counter. Actually ENIAC was the first generation computers it’s developed on 1946 because in that year they build stored program counters. The transistors and the general adoption of ferrite core memories are introduced in the year 1958.  2500 first generation computers are installed worldwide in the year end of 1958. The first generation computers are the base for development of all computers. Now we reached the many latest generation computers.

Four generations of computers have been identified as study points in the development of modern computing technology.
 
  Vacuum tube technology typified the first generation of modern computers--such as the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC), which weighed in at 30 tons, stretched out 80 feet, and stood two stories high. ENIAC ran on 18,000 vacuum tubes.
 

Transistors were first applied to computers in 1955. TRADIC, made by AT&T Bell Laboratories, was the first fully transistorized computer. Three cubic feet in size, the computer used almost 800 transistors instead of vacuum tubes. Being fully transistorized allowed the computer to operate on fewer than 100 watts of power, and to run about twenty times faster than first-generation computers.

The development of the integrated circuit, which massed miniaturized transistors on a chip of silicon, provided a logical model for the microprocessor.
The emergence of the microprocessor completed a course of progressive development which has determined the nature and capacities of computers as we know them today. Here's a step-by-step description of how microprocessors work