Breadcrumbs

[Usman55]

First Generation (1944-1959):

In the first generation, vacuum tubes about the size of light bulbs were used as an internal computer components. Thousands of such tubes large in size generate a lot of heat, low capacity storage consisted of magnetic drums and relay lines. These tubes helped in calculation and computation work. First generation computers stored data on punched cards. In 1957 magnetic tape was introduced as faster and more compact method of storing data. Here is a list of some first generation computers:

ENIAC: Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator
EDVAC: Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer
MANIAC: Mathematical Analysis Numerical Integrator And Computer
UNIVAC: Universal Automatic Computer
EDSAC: Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer
LEO: Lyons Electronic Office
IBM: 701 and IBM-650



Second Generation (1959-1965):

Semiconductors diodes and transistors (developed in 1948, at Bell Laboratories of USA) were used instead of vacuum tubes in second generation. Not only the transistors shrink the size of computer but they also had numerous other advantages. They needed no warm-up time, consumed less energy, and were faster and more reliable. Second generation computers used magnetic cores as main memory. Another important development of this generation was the move from machine language to assembly language. The first language was FORTRAN in 1950s, then COBOL in 1959. Some of the second generation computers are listed below:

UNIVAC II, IBM-1400-1401, CDC-1604, IBM-1400, IBM-1600 series and NCR-300.



Third Generation (1965-1970):

Beginning in 1965 the ICs were introduced to replace the transistors in the computers. Such computers are now called third generation computers. An Integrated Circuit (IC) is a complete circuit (including transistors, resistors and capacitors) on a small chip of silicon. Silicon is much smaller than transistors and it is used because it is a semiconductor. The integrated circuit moved to Large Scale Integration (LSI) in 1970. Software became more easy during this generation. This generation consisted many computers from which some are listed below:

ICL-1900 series, IBM-360 series, IBM-370, ICL-2900, UNIVAC 1108 series, UNIVAC 1900 series.



Fourth Generation (1971-1985):

The fourth generation was actually an extension of third generation technology. In this generation, computer gained dramatic speed, reliability and storage capacity. The specialized chips known as micro-processors were also developed. It was an invention of Intel Corporation of USA. It was capable of performing arithmetic, logical and control unit function. The use of micro-processor chips as CPU resulted in the development of another class of computers called Micro Computers or PC. The most popular inventions of this generation are:

IBM-PC, Apple Macintosh, PC-XT/AT 286-(386 and onward introduced after 1986)



Fifth Generation (Since 1985):

The fifth generation is the story of the super-breed of computers now being planned by the Japanese. Japan is spending 300 million pounds a year on such a project. There are similar projects in the USA, the European Economic Community and in Britain. These computers have thinking power and capability to make decisions as human beings do and may prove better than man in certain aspects. These computers, when developed, will be able to execute billions of instructions per second and will have unimaginable storage capacities. Fifth generation is still continued. Cray, Cyber, Hitachi, NEC and IBM are trying to prepare the computer as their needs. Robot is the goal for this massive generation.

[Axel]

Its more the processor generations
Nice work!

[zachman61]

seems copied and pasted lol

[Usman55]

You can't say I copied/pasted that. The thing I did was to collect information from the whole internet ans shrink it to this small article so people can have a basic info on the generations of computer! This was a tough job. Took me 2 hours.

[Skillful]

Useful info!especially for my bro!

[Usman55]

There were two reasons to post this. First, I had to read an article on info of generations of com. Second, I wanted to help those who needed to learn about this.

[zachman61]

You can't say I copied/pasted that. The thing I did was to collect information from the whole internet ans shrink it to this small article so people can have a basic info on the generations of computer! This was a tough job. Took me 2 hours.

i said it looks it.

[Usman55]

Okay, I don't have a problem with that lol.