Computer: Generation to Generation

28Jul10

It’s been a while since I write again in this blog.

Well I want to say sorry for this. The topic that I want to bring is the history of the computer generation.

When we see the meaning of computer in Wikipedia, a computer is a programmable machine that receives input, stores and manipulates data//information, and provides output in a useful format.

Actually we have to see etymologically that the word Computer comes from compute added with suffix -er that will mean someone/something that do computations (counting). And that is the essence of the prototypes and the first generation of Computer; machine to do computations (basic counting numbers, i.e addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). But through years, computers faced a lot of revolutionary improvements. The computer’s definition itself moved from just a computation device (or even a person who do calculations) to a complex machine that can do a lot of things (it able us to view images, surf the Internet, watch videos, listen to music, type documents, etc.).

The First Generation of Computer

ENIAC

This generation has a big theme of Vacuum tubes. A lot of vacuum tubes were used in the prototype and first generation of computer. The vacuum tubes are used for circuitry. This type of computer drains a lot of electricity and space. It is also produce great amount of heat. Programming of this computer used the machine language (the lowest programming language level) that is understandable by the machine. The input used paper tape and punch cards and the output used the printout. We rarely will see this type of computer. The example of these computers are UNIVAC and ENIAC. UNIVAC is the first commercial computer that was used by US Bureau Census in 1951.

Transistors: The Base of The Second Generation

While the first generation used the ineffective vacuum tubes, the second generation was brought because of the founding of transistors. Invented in 1947 and used in computer in late 1950s, transistors made the computers smaller, cheaper, faster, and lowering its power need and the heat it produces.

IBM 7094

One transistor is equivalent with 40 vacuum tubes. These computers used assembly language (programming language that symbolize the instructions in short words like ADD, LOAD, etc.) and early versions of COBOL and FORTRAN (early high programming language). The second generation is the first to save the instructions in memory. The I/O (Input-Output) system still same with the first. One of the example of this computer is IBM 7094.

Third Generation with Integrated Circuits

Transistors had made a breakthrough in the computer’s history. But, another breakthrough was made by integrated circuits. These circuits can contain thousands and more transistors in a single chip. The integrated circuits are called semiconductor chips or silicon chips.

DEC PDP-8

This type of chip made the computers become faster, more powerful, cheaper, and smaller. This generation too introduced the using of keyboard, monitor, and operating system. Two of them are IBM S/360 and DEC PDP-8

IBM S/360

Microprocessor leads to the Fourth Generation

Putting millions of transistors and thousands of integrated circuits in a single chip will make the computer becomes really powerful. That is the core of this fourth generation. With this innovation, chip companies like Intel, AMD, etc. develop themselves rapidly and demanded by the market. This microprocessor we call it as the central processing unit because it can perform millions to billions operations per second. One of the starters of this fourth generation is “the personal computer” Altair 8800, Apple II, etc. Nowadays all computer produced now are more advanced than those and the processor technology is more advanced. This generation improves GUI (graphical user interface), mouse, hand held devices, and other peripherals.

Altair 8800, The earliest of fourth generation

Artificial Intelligence, the Now Developing and Future Computers

The fifth generation of computer is the computer capable of having artificial intelligence. One of the applications is voice recognition. Using parallel processing, superconductors, nanotechnology, and quantum computing, this type wants to change the face and system of the computer. The goal is the computer will understand natural language as the input and capable of learning and self-organization.

Quoted with changes from Webopedia.com,
Crews.org, other sources and pictures from Google.

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Tags: artificial intelligence, computer, five generations, history, integrated circuits, microprocessor, transistors, vacuum tubes