Generation of Computer || Solo Gyan

Solo Gyan, In this lesson, you will know about the generation of computers or the History of computers.

    Here, I explained very easily about the generation of computers. if you know about please do read & watch complete this video and lesson for in-depth knowledge. 

    If you want to lesson about a computer, then you have come to the right website, you can learn about computers from basic computers to programming here. Go to the website to know. 

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This course design for BCC, CCC, CCC+, ECC, CS, BCA, IT, Computer Diploma, Computer Operator and Based on NIELIT ( DOEACC ). And you can Learn Free here A to Z ( complete Course available here).  

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 Generation of Computer 

Computers have evolved over a period of time. The development of present-day computers can be studied in reference to five generations of computers. Let us discuss the five generations of computers. 

First Generations Computers ( 1940-1956)

Some of the characteristics of the first generations computers were:- 

• They used Vacuum tubes.
• They were very large in size.
• They were very expensive to operate.
• The had small internal memory.
• Inputs in such computers were in the punched cards and paper tapes.

A punched card is a rectangular piece of cardboard in which information is represented by the presence or absence of holes punched in it. 

Some of the examples of first-generations computers are as follows. 

Mark I:- 

Mark I was designed by Howard H. Aiken in 1944. It was the first fully automatic calculator. it was about 15 metres long and the wires connecting the various parts of the machine were about 800 kilometres long. This machine was slow in performing calculations like addition, subtraction, multiplications and division. 

ENIAC:- 

ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator  And Computer. It was developed by John Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly in 1946. It was the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer. It consisted of 18,000 vaccum tubes, occupied 63 square metres and weighed more than 27,000 kilograms. 

    It was capable of solving a wide rage of numerical problems. It did not have stored programs. It had to be programmed by manual wiring for each task. 

EDSAC:- 

EDSAC stands for Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator. IT was designed by Professor M. Wilkes in 1949. It was slightly faster then ENIAC. It occupied an area of 20 square metres. it weighed approximately 6,000 kilograms. It was the first full-size stored program computer. 

EDVAC:-

EDVAC stands for Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer. It was proposed by John P. Eckert and John W. Mauchly in 1944 even as the ENIAC was being developed. John Von Neumann. Who also gave the concept stored programs, joined them later to help in designing the EDVAC. IT was completed in 1948. It covered an area of 45.5 square metres. It weighed approximately 8,000 kilograms.  

UNIVAC:-  

UNIVersal Automatic Computer I was developed by John P. Eckert  and John W. Mauchly in 1951. It occupied an area of 35.5 square metres. it weighted approximately 13,000 kilograms. it was the first commercially available electronic computer. It handled both numbers and alphabetic characters properly. 

Second Generations computers ( 1956-1963 )  

Some of the characteristics of the second generation computers were.

• They used transistors.
• They were smaller and faster compared to the first generation computers.
• They were cheaper and more efficient compared to the first generation computers.
• They relied on punched cards for inputs.

Some of the example of second generation computers are UNIVAC III, IBM 704, IBM1401, IBM 700, RCA 501, NCR 300 series, Burroughs B5000, 200 series. 

A transistor  it an electronic device that is used to control the flow of electricity in an electronic equipment. 

Third-generation computers ( 1964-1971 )

Some of the characteristics of the third-generation computers were.

• They used integrated circuits (ICs) popularly known as chips. 
• They were faster and more efficient than second-generation computers.
• They were smaller in size compared to the second-generation computers. 
• They used a keyboard to input data and a monitor to display output.
• They used an operating system that allowed running of many different programs simultaneously. 

Some of the examples of third-generation computers are UNIVAC 900 series, IBM 360, ICL 1900 and Burroughs 67000. 

IC is a small electronic device made form a special material called semiconductor. It can contain more than a million electronic components per chip. 

Fourth-generation computers ( 1972 - Present ) 

The fourth-generation computers are the present-day computers. They have the following characteristics.

• They use VLSI ( vary large scale integration ) and ULSI (Ultra Large scale Integration) which contain all the components of a CPU on a single chip.
• They are smaller, energy efficient and more reliable than the earlier generations of computers. 
• They are more advanced it terms of processing and memory capacities. 
• They have led to the development of personal computers (PCs)
• The present-day computers can be linked together to form computer networks. This led to the development of the worldwide network called the internet.
• They are extremely powerful and can process millions of instructions in a fraction of a second. 

Some of the examples of fourth-generation computers are IBM PC and Apple Macintosh.  

  In 1981, IBM introduced its first computer for the home user and in 1984, Apple Introduced Macintosh. 

Fifth-generation computers ( Present and beyond )

Till the fourth-generation computers, the major focus was, and has been, on reducing size and improving efficiency. This resulted in smaller, yet faster computers. However, they only drawback of these computers is the lack of ability to think and there has been an attempt to achieve this in the firth-generation computers. 

These days, scientists are working on fifth-generations computers. 

• These computers will be based on artificial intelligence.
• Artificial intelligence is the branch of computer science that aims to create computers that can think, behave and react in the same way as human do.
• The fifth-generation computers are expected to overcome the lack of thinking power in the earlier generations. 
• These computers will be able to take commands in audio visual way and carry out instructions. ROBOTS are the best examples of artificial intelligence. 

The term ' Artificial intelligence' was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy at the Massachuestts Institute of Technology.