Computer History & Genarations

As the time passed, the device of more suitable and reliable machine was need which could perform our work more quickly. During this time, in the year 1946, the first successful electronic computer called ENIAC was developed and it was the starting point of the current generation of computer

First Generation of Computers

The first electronic computer was involved in the year 1946. Professors Eckert and Mauchly at the university of Pennsylvania in U.S.A led the team. This computer was called Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator  ENAIC. It used high-speed vacuum tube switching device

Second Generation of Computers

The second generation of computers appeared in 1955 and survived till 1965. These computers used transistors instead of vacuum tubes. During this period the magnetic cores were invented for storage. magnetic cores were used to develop large random access memories. Magnetic disk storage was also developed The higher reliability of computers and large memory availability led to the development of high level languages like FORTRAN COBOL Algol and Snobol.

Third Generation of Computers

In the generation of computers the germanium transistors were replaced by silicon Transistors The third generation began in the year 1965 and lasted till 1975. There were improvements in the design of magnetic core memories. The time Shared operation system increased the productivity of the programmers. In this generation the Integrated database management systems emerged and high level languages also improved.

Fourth Generation of Computers


First Phase (1976-85)

Medium Scale Integrated circuits resulted in large and Very Scale Integrated Circuits (VLSI). Magnetic core memories were replaced by semiconducting members. The introduction of microprocessor resulted in two directions in computer development. The emergence of the powerful personal computers was the first direction and the second direction. The emergence of the powerful personal computers was the first direction and second direction was decentralization of computer organization

Second Phase (1986-98)

In This phase the speed of the microprocessors increased more and also the size of the memory. The mainframe computer of early 80,s died in mid 90,s. Microprocessors like Pentium,Power PC, etc. are being used as the CPU.

Fifth Generation of Computers


This generation is based on Artificial Intelligence. The applications such as voice recognition are being used today. Due to parallel processing and superconductors, the artificial intelligence is becoming a success. In future quantum computation, molecular and nano technologies will change the look of the computers. the objective of the fifth generation computing is to develop devices that react to natural language input and are able to learn self-organize