GENERATIONS OF COMPUTERS

FIRST GENERATION 1951 - 1959 Use of vacuum tubes as a means of storing data in the memory. Made the use of punched cards obsolete Computer boards were replaced by computer program Storage capacity of 100 bytes to 2 kilobytes (2,000 bytes) Can perform 2,000 to 16,000 addition per second

SECOND GENERATION 1959 - 1964 TRANSISTORS Use transistors and diodes Computers are smaller in size, faster, more reliable and much greater in processing capacity Has built-in error detecting device Printers were developed Storage capacity of 6 KB to 1.3 MB Can process up to 6,000 to 3M operations per second TRANSISTORS made of silicon forty times faster than vacuum tubes

THIRD GENERATION COMPUTERS 1965 - 1970 Integrated solid circuitry was developed Improved secondary storage devices New input and output devices was developed Increased speed of about 10,000 by means of IC’s Multitasking Can perform 100,000 to 400M operations per second INTEGRATED CIRCUITS Has many transistors in one silicon Developed by Jack St. Claire Kilby in 1958 First IC was invented in 1961 Also known as the “silicon ship”

FOURTH GENERATION COMPUTERS 1970 - present Development of microelectronics Multiprocessing, multiprogramming, time sharing, Multitasking miniaturization, operating speed, and virtual storage Can do more than one function Its size was of the television or smaller It can do 500, 000 to 1B operations per second MICROPOCESSOR Less than 1 inch square and can contain millions of electronic circuits A complete computer on a chip Can input, process and output

FIFTH GENERATION COMPUTERS Present and beyond Artificial Intelligence Devices are based on artificial intelligence and are still in development Includes voice recognition Goal is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self - organization