Generations of Computers
A generation of computers refers to the specific improvements in computer
technology with time. In 1946, electronic pathways called circuits were
developed to perform the counting. It replaced the gears and other
mechanical parts used for counting in previous computing machines.
In each new generation, the circuits became smaller and more advanced
than the previous generation circuits. The miniaturization helped increase
the speed, memory and power of computers. There are five generations of
computers which are described below;
First Generation Computers
The first generation (1946-1959) computers were slow, huge and expensive.
In these computers, vacuum tubes were used as the basic components of
CPU and memory. These computers were mainly depended on batch
operating system and punch cards. Magnetic tape and paper tape were used
as output and input devices in this generation;
Some of the popular first generation computers are;
oENIAC-( Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
oEDVAC-( Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)
oUNIVACI( Universal Automatic Computer)
oIBM-701
oIBM-650
Second Generation Computers
The second generation (1959-1965) was the era of the transistor computers.
These computers used transistors which were cheap, compact and
consuming less power; it made transistor computers faster than the first
generation computers.
In this generation, magnetic cores were used as the primary memory and
magnetic disc and tapes were used as the secondary storage. Assembly
language and programming languages like COBOL and FORTRAN, and Batch
processing and multiprogramming operating systems were used in these
computers.
