The First Generation Of Computers :: essays research papers

The First Generation of ComputersThe first generation of computers, beginning more or less the end of World War 2,and continuing until around the year 1957, include computers that use vacuumtubes, drum memories, and programming in machine code. Computers at that timewhere mammoth machines that did not have the power our present daytime desktopmicrocomputers.     In 1950, the first real-time, interactive computer was completed by adesign team at MIT. The "Whirlwind Computer," as it was called, was a revampedU.S. navy project for developing an aircraft simulator. The Whirlwind used acathode ray tube and a light gun to provide interactively. The Whirlwind waslinked to a series of radars and could delineate unfriendly aircraft and directinterceptor fighters to their projected locations. It was to be the prototypefor a net profit of computers and radar sites (SAGE) acting as an important elementof U.S. air confession for a quarter-century after 1958.&nbs p    In 1951, the first commercially-available computer was delivered to theBureau of the nosecount by the Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation. The UNIVAC(Universal Automatic Computer) was the first computer which was not a one-of-a-kind laboratory instrument. The UNIVAC became a household word in 1952 when itwas used on a televised newscast to project the winner of the Eisenhower-Stevenson presidential race with stupefy accuracy. That same year Maurice V.Wilkes (developer of EDSAC) laid the foundation for the concepts ofmicroprogramming, which was to become the guide for computer design andconstruction.     In 1954, the first general-purpose computer to be onlytransistorized was built at Bell Laboratories. TRADIC (Transistorized Airborne