Computer Generation And History

                      Computer and Generation 

    What Are The Five Generations 

      Of Computers? (1st to 5th) 

                    

    (1.1)                             First Generation  (Vacuum Tubes)

                            

   Computers of this generation used vacuum tubes to perform calculations. Vacuum tubes were expensive because of the amount of material and skill needed to manufacture them. Vacuum tubes get hot and burn out. Computers of this generation were very large machines. Special rooms with air conditioning were needed to house them because of the heat generated by the vacuum tubes. The most important computers were ENIAC and UNIVAC-I.

            ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator)

    It was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer designed by John William Mauchly and John Eckert in 19424 The ENIAC was very heavy and large in size. It consumed 140 kilowatts of power and was capable of doing 5000 additions per second. ENIAC was a decimal rather than a binary machine. That is numbers were represented in decimal form and arithmetic was performed in the decimal system. The major drawback of ENIAC was that it had to be programmed manually by setting switches and plugging and unplugging cables.

       UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)

     In 1947, Eckert and Mauchly formed Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation to manufacture computers commercially. Their first successful machine was UNIVAC, which was delivered to the US Bureau of the census in 1951. It was actually the first computer developed for commercial use. It was intended for both scientific and commercial applications.

    (1.2)                            Second Generation (Transistors)

   Transistor was invented in 1947 by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and William Brattain.200 transistors are about the same size as one vacuum tube in a computer. Much less expensive than a vacuum tube. A transistor can work 40 times faster than a vacuum tube. Do not get hot and burn out like a vacuum tube. The major change in the electronic computer was the replacement of vacuum tubes with transistors. The transistor was invented at Bell Labs in 1947. The transistor is smaller, cheaper, and dissipates less heat than a vacuum tube but can be used in the same way as a vacuum tube to construct computers. As compared to first-generation computers, second-generation computers were smaller and had high processing speed. Most of these computers used magnetic core memory as internal storage. The second-generation computers enjoyed the use of more complex arithmetic and logic units, use of low-level and high-level programming languages such as COBOL, BASIC, Pascal, and Assembly, etc., and the provision of system software with the computers.

 

    (1.3)                           Third Generation (Integrated Circuits)                           

    The major invention of the third generation of computers was the development of IC (integrated circuit). A single IC chip contains thousands of transistors. The computer became smaller in size, faster, more reliable, and lower in price. And also became very common in medium to large-scale businesses. These computers used magnetic core memory as internal storage. The most successful computers of this generation were IBM system/360 and DEC PDP-8, the others were UNIVAC 1108, UNIVAC 9000, and IBM 370.

    (1.4)               Fourth Generation (Microprocessors)

The fourth generation of computers started with the invention of microprocessors. It revolutionized the computer world. Advancements were made in the integrated circuit technology. LSI (Large Scale Integrated Circuits) and VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits) were designed which contributed to the invention of microprocessors. Computers of this generation used semiconductor memory, which increased the internal storage of computers. These computers have high processing speed, more internal storage, and are smaller in size. Examples of fourth-generation computers are the Apple Macintosh and IBM PC.

    (1.5)               Fifth Generation (Artificial Intelligence)

     The fifth-generation computers are based on artificial intelligence (AI). They are still in the development stage. Some applications of this generation are being used such as voice recognition. Scientists are working to increase the speed of the computer. They are trying to create a computer with real IQ with the help of advanced programming and technologies. The goal is to develop a computer that responds to natural language input. The advancement in modern technologies will revolutionize the computer in the future) These technologies include quantum computation, molecular technology, and nanotechnology.