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Vacuum Tubes
The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory. -
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First Generation: Vacuum Tubes
There was a great ignorance of the capacities of the computers.
It covered the decade of the fifties. They were extremely large, they used a lot of electricity, they generated a lot of heat and they were extremely slow.These computers were very expensive to operate and in addition to using a great deal of electricity, the first computers generated a lot of heat, which was often the cause of malfunctions. -
Punched Card
A punched card or punch card is a piece of stiff paper that can be used to contain digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. -
Drum Memory
They used the drum memory to store information and internal instrucctions. Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. -
The Binary Number
The binary number was used to represent the data. In mathematics and digital electronics, a binary number is a number expressed in the binary numeral system or base-2 numeral system which represents numeric values using two different symbols: typically 0 (zero) and 1 (one). -
Transistors
They used transistors to process information.
Transistors were faster, smaller, and more reliable than vacuum tubes. 200 transistors could be accommodated in the same amount of space as a vacuum tube. -
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Second Generation: Transistors
In this generation the computers are reduced in size and are of lower cost. Many companies appear and the computers were quite advanced for their time like the Burroughs 5000 series and the ATLAS of the University of Manchester. Some computers were programmed with perforated tape and others were wired -
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, normally silicon. -
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Third Generation: Integrated Circuits
The third generation of computers emerged with the development of integrated circuits (silicon pickups) in which thousands of electronic components are placed in a miniature integration. The computers again became smaller, faster, gave off less heat and were energetically more efficient. The IBM-360 computer dominated sales of the third generation of computers since its introduction in 1965. The Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-8 was the first mini-computer. -
IBM 360
IBM S / 360 (S / 360) was a mainframe computer system that IBM announced on April 7, 1964. It was the first family of computers designed to cover applications regardless of size or environment (scientific, commercial) . The design made a clear distinction between architecture and implementation -
More improvements
The microprocessor was developed.
More circuits are placed inside a "chip".
"LSI - Large Scale Integration circuit".
"VLSI - Very Large Scale Integration circuit".
Each "chip" can do different tasks.
A simple "chip" currently contains the control unit and the arithmetic / logic unit. The third component, the primary memory, is operated by other "chips".
The magnetic ring memory is replaced by the silicon chip memory.
Personal computers or PC.
Supercomputers are developed. -
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Fourth Generation: Microprocessors
Microprocessors appear which is a great advancement of microelectronics, are integrated circuits of high density and with an impressive speed. Microcomputers based on these circuits are extremely small and cheap, so their use extends to the industrial market. Here are born the personal computers that have acquired enormous proportions and that have influenced the society in general on the call "computer revolution". -
A.I (Artificial Intelligence)
Artificial intelligence is the field of study that tries to apply the processes of human thought used in problem solving to the computer. -
Robotics
Robotics is the art and science of the creation and use of robots. A robot is an independent hybrid computing system that performs physical and computational activities. They are being designed with artificial intelligence, so they can respond more effectively to unstructured situations. -
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Fifth generation: Artificial Intelligence
In view of the accelerated progress of microelectronics, industrial society has given itself the task of also putting the development of software and the systems with which computers are used. The international competition for the mastery of the computer market emerges, in which two leaders who, however, have not been able to reach the level desired: the ability to communicate with the computer in a more everyday language and not to through specialized codes or control languages.