FIRST GENERATION COMPUTER

FIRST GENERATION COMPUTER (1945-1953)

With the onset of the second war, governments sought to develop computers to exploit their potential strategic importance. This increased funding for computer development projects hastened technical progress. By 1941 German engineer Konrad Zuse had developed a computer, the Z3, to design airplanes and missiles. First generation computers were characterized by the fact that operating instructions were made-to-order for the specific task for which the computer was to be used. Each computer had a different binary-coded program called a machine language that told it how to operate. This made the computer difficult to program and limited its versatility and speed. Other distinctive features of first generation computers were the use of vacuum tubes and magnetic drums for data storage. Three machines have been promoted at various times as the first electronic switches, in the form of vacuum tubes, instead of electromechanical relays.

The first general purposes programmable electronic computer was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), built by J.Presper Eckert and John V.Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1953 Burroughs Corps. Installs the Universal Digital Electronic Computer (UDEC) at Wayne State University. First magnetic tape device, the IBM 726, is introduced with 100 character-per-inch density and 75 inches-per-second speed. IBM ships its first stored-program computer, the 701. It is a vacuum tube, or first generation computer. After several years of development, LEO, a commercial version of EDSAC built by Lyons Company in the UK, goes into service. The IBM 650, known as the magnetic drum calculator, debuts and become the first mass-produced computer.