Computer History

First Generation

Jun 12, 1945

During the first generation of computer history, computers used vacuum tubes or Valves technology to run. One example of an early computer that ran like this is Eniac, created by Mauchly and Eckar . These vacuum tubes controlled and amplified electronic signals. A computer used 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resisters, 10,000 capacitors, 60,000 switches and used 150 kilowatts of electric power. They were incredibly large machines and had small primitive memories and no auxiliary storage.

Eniac

Feb 15, 1946

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first operating electronic digital computer in the United a states. This was built by John Mauchly, and was developed by the US Army to compute World War 2 firing tables. The ENIAC weighed 30 tons, used 200 kilowatts of electric power, 18,000 vacuum tubes, and 1,500 relays.

EDSAC

Jun 13, 1949

The EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) was the first stored-program computer. This computer was built by a team at Cambridge University led by the late Professor Sir Maurice Wilkes. There were only 18 operation codes and 512 words of memory, and input was by punched paper-tape and output by teleprinter. However, this was a great improvement over other computers of the time, due to it's ability to perform calculations that other researchers believed impossible.

EDVAC

Jun 13, 1951

EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was created by John Mauchly and Presler Eckert. This computer was one of the first to use binary system to perform tasks, rather than the decimal system. It was also a stored-program machine.

UNIVAC

Jun 14, 1951

The UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was proposed by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert. It was the first commercial computer, and used vacuum tubes, which then used switches for inputting and punch cards for outputting and storage.

TRADIC

Jan 22, 1954

Invented by Jean Howard Felker this was the first Transistor Computer. It had 92 contract transistors, and 550 diodes. It changed all circuits to reliable junction transistors.

Second Generation

Jun 19, 1954

In the second generation, vacuum tubes were replaced with transistors, which were an invention of scientists William B. Shickley, John Burdeen and Walter H. Brattain. The transistors were much smaller than vacuum tubes, and required less power to run. They were also faster and more reliable. These transistors were useful due to their small size, which thereby allowed the computer itself to be smaller, as well as the low amount of energy they required to run. They were also very cheap.

TX-0

Jun 19, 1956

This transistor computer was built by a group of engineers at MIT called the "Lincoln Team", led by Kenneth Olsen. It used 3,600 transistors, a built-in cathode-ray tube display, and a light-pen that enabled operators to interact with programs while they are running. This computer had a large RAM memory, speed, and reliability.

LARC

Jun 19, 1960

The LARC (Livermore Advanced Research Computer) invented by Remington Rand was the first computer to use multi-level logic. It had two CPU's, and a second computer for input/ output called "The Processor". The LARC was a very fast computer for it's time. It used bi-quinary coded decimal arithmetic, and it's addition time was 4 microseconds, multiplication time was 8 microsecond and the division time was 28 microseconds.

IBM7030 (STRETCH)

Jun 19, 1961

The IBM7030, also know as Stretch, was IBM's first transistor super- computer. It was created in response to a proposal by Edward Teller a new scientific computing system for three-dimensional hydrodynamic calculations. It consisted of 170,000 transistors, but was considered unsuccessful because of design issues that caused IBM to withdraw from Teller's contract.

Third Generation

Jun 19, 1963

The third generation of computers replaced transistors with compact integrated circuits, or IC's, of silicon chips. IC was invented by Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby. These IC's were advantageous because they had a large number of silicon chips in them, but they retained a small physical size, allowing for smaller computers. They also led to decreased power consumption and heat generation, as well as increased speed and reliability.

IBM 360

Apr 7, 1964

The IBM 360 was a mainframe computer system that covered all applications. It was created by Gene Amdahl and Fred Brooks, and used microcode to implement instructions. It had 19 combinations of graduated speed and memory capacity in the CPU, and more than 40 types of peripheral equipment.

CDC 6600

Jun 19, 1964

Invented by Seymour Cray, this machine this machine had 10 operating units and 32 independent memory banks. It executed 3 million instructions per second, and had a computation of 1 million flopping points per second.

PDP 8

Mar 22, 1965

This was PDP's first successful minicomputers engineered by Edson de Castro.

IBM 370

Jun 30, 1970

This computer had standard duel processing compatibility based on integrated circuits, and well as virtual memory. It also had 128 bit floating point arithmetic.

Fourth Generation

Jun 19, 1971

The fourth generation of computers used IC's, as the third generation did, but with Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI). This generation also used microprocessors, created by Marcian Hoff, which are central processing units that allowed for computing at home to be easier. These microprocessors controlled the IC's. This allowed for high processing power and reliability, along with low maintenance, power, cost, size and power consumption.

Intel 8086

Jun 19, 1976

This was a microprocessor chip created by Intel. It led to Intel's most successful line of processors.

IBM PC

Aug 12, 1981

PC stand for personal computer. This was created by a team of engineers led by Don Estridge, and had a CPU as well as a main memory of 16 kB to 256 kB.

Intel 80286

Feb 1, 1982

This was a 16-bit microprocessor created by Intel. This was the first microprocessor with memory management and protection abilities. It used 134,000 transistors.

Apple/ Macintosh

Jan 24, 1984

Created by Steve Jobs, the original macintosh computer was a personal computer with graphical user interphase and a mouse.

Intel 80386

Jun 19, 1985

This was a 32-bit microprocessor. It used 275,000 transistors, and worked as a CPU for many PC's. It used the same programming, instruction set, and binary encoding that are still used for all current 32-bit processors.