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Pascal machine by Blaise Pascal
La pascaline was the first mechanical calculator in the world, planned by Blaise Pascal in 1642. -
Period: to
Timespan
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Leibniz calculating machine
Leibniz's machine was conceived in 1671 but built only in 1694, being the first machine made for the purpose of multiplying. -
Charles Babbage's analytical computer
The Analytical Engine was a proposed mechanical general-purpose computer designed by English mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage, with the assistance of Ada Lovelace. It was first described in 1837 as the successor to Babbage's difference engine, which was a design for a simpler mechanical computer. -
Punched card by Herman Hollerith
essential instrument for the entry of information to the computers of the time. -
First computer: Z-1, by Konrad Zuse
The Z1 was a mechanical arithmetic unit, developed by Konrad Zuse, from 1934 and destroyed during the Second World War. Their schedule was limited and instructions were passed through a punched card. -
1st generation of computers: valves
A vacuum tube computer, now termed a first-generation computer, is a computer that uses vacuum tubes for logic circuitry. Although superseded by second generation, transistorized computers, vacuum tube computers continued to be built into the 1960s. These computers were mostly one-of-a-kind designs. -
MARK 1 by Howard Aiken
was the first large-scale automatic electro-mechanical calculator developed in the United States, designed in 1930 by graduate student in physics Howard Aiken, at Harvard University and, built in 1944, in partnership with the company IBM, during the Second World War.
Weighing around 5 tons, it was the first automatic calculator produced on a large scale, developed in the United States. -
ENIAC by John Mauchly e John Presper Eckert
ENIAC began to be developed in 1943 during World War II to compute tactical trajectories that required substantial knowledge in mathematics more quickly, but only became operational after the end of the war.
Its processing capacity was 5,000 operations per second;
Created in the second war, its main purpose was ballistic calculations;
It had 17,468 thermionic valves, with 160 kW of power. -
2nd generation of computers: transistors
A transistor computer, now often called a second generation computer, 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 of computers, through the late 1950s and 1960s featured circuit boards filled with individual transistors and magnetic core memory. -
3rd generation of computers: integrated circuits
The third generation of computers, which started in 1965, had as its main evolution the implementation of integrated circuits. The launch of the first Microprocessor in 1971 marks the end of this generation and the beginning of the next. -
4th generation of computers: large-scale circuits
The fourth generation of computers started in 1971, when Intel launched the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, much more powerful than the SSI and MSI circuits of that time, and only ended in 1981 with the launch of ULSI circuits (Scale Circuits Ultra Large). -
5th generation of computers: ultra large scale integration
This generation remains today. Computers as we know them today.
