The First Generation Of Computers

Currently, computers are used for everything in life. For example, from researching for a large essay project to playing video games with friends. “From the outset, computers were weighed for both military and commercial significance, and hence they straddled the very institutional boundaries that central to this study. It is also significant that computers became valuable research instruments in nearly all disciplines.” (Akera, 2). The first digital computer was constructed in 1946 by John Mauchly, a professor, and Presper Eckert, an inventor. “They met by chance in 1941 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering. They soon developed a revolutionary vision: to use electricity as a means of computing--in other words, to make electricity "think."” (McCartney, 1). They were ignored by their colleagues, but in 1943 they were becoming more well known and was funded by the U.S Army. The U.S Army was seeking for a contraption that can quickly calculate ballistic missile trajectories in wartime Europe and Africa (McCartney, 1). John Mauchly and Presper Eckert led a team that constructed the computer that occupied 1,800 square feet and weighed thirty tons. They named the large computer, ENIAC, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The process of building this machine was not an effortless task, Mauchly and Presper and their team had to overcome many problems

There have been many advances since the initial invention of the computer fifty years ago. Today, computers operate many of the things that we use in everyday life. Some examples of these things are farm machinery, cars, planes, video games, heat and water delivery to our homes, banking, billing, and even the stock market. The advances of the computer have resulted in the

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries Science & Technology have grown-up a radical contribution to industry, and the personal computer has become a defining symbol of our age. In 1940, it was not recognized that Science & Technology would develop into an innovative way that would intensely affect business, trade, the monetary world, administration, discipline, education, communications, entertainment, and society as a whole. Today, information technology and its applications persist to go forward progressively. Computers and communication technology will become even more precious to civilization as they are ever more able to distinguish

From a very simple invention satisfying man’s conviction to do better, the abacus dramatically encouraged the growth of trade wherever it was adopted, for it was well suited to any commercial calculation. Still used in the Soviet Union and in the Far East in the 20th century, the abacus was finally replaced worldwide by the cheap electronic calculator. (The Inventions, pg.10) In 1945, the world’s first fully electronic computer was completed at the University of Pennsylvania. It was called ENIAC-Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer.

The 1940’s was the beginning of an era of computers ruling us. It all started with Konrad Zuse a German engineer creates and finishes the computer called Z3 built in 1941 it was built using 2,300 relays, and used a floating point binary arithmetic, and had a 22 bit word length. Although the original was destroyed in a bombing run in Berlin in late 1943. He supervised a reconstruction of his invention in the 60's which is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In February of 1946 the ENIAC was released and the public was able to view it, built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert they improved it by 1,000 times since the first computers were released. Started in 1943 it took 3 years to complete and it used a plugboard and switch program, and the speed was about 5,000 operations per second. It took up 1,000 square feet, or the size of a small house! In 1944 the Harvard Mark-1 was completed. Thought by the Harvard professor Howard Aiken, and built by IBM, the dimensions of this beast was room sized, relay-based calculator. Also it had a

The origin of the computer resides with the military. The computer itself was created by the military during the Cold War era, when we were in a technological race with Russia. This race was the fuel for massive advancements in technology especially in the sector of computer intelligence. The first Computer’s were physically large enough to fill an entire room. They were used to manage large quantities of data in textual and numerical form. The government backed certain research facilities in the advancement of the computer and some investigated and experimented in computer technology with art and music. 1

In the past 100 years, the world has completely turned around. The technological and computer revolutions have completely changed the way the world works. Henry Ford revolutionized factorial production through the creation of the assembly line. It increased efficiency and a basic standard of conformity among products, therefore making the company a lot more successful. The rest of the industry creating a nation-wide revolution based on efficiency adopted this new innovation. Following the innovation of the assembly line, a new era of development came into existence. In the 1970’s, computers were first introduced. Although they were as large as a room and could only play tic tac toe, they were the start of the

The ENIAC was invented by John Mauchly and J.Presper Eckert, Jr.and built from 1943-1945. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), often referred to as the first computer, was built to supply the need for faster calculations. It started the information age and led to the development of the first commercial computers (The ENIAC).

When ENIAC was announced in 1946, it was heralded in the press as a "Giant Brain." [8] It had a speed on the order of one thousand (103) times faster than that of electro-mechanical machines; this computational power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists

The first generation of electronic computers was characterized by hulking monstrosities of tubes and wires, housed in metal. The first programmable electronic computer was Colossus. Completed in 1943, Colossus contained

People in the United States were starting to invent gadgets to make life easier. In 1945, one of the main inventions was a computer named ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer). This was a huge step for the United States, and it allowed new technology to be made that could not be before. The ENIAC was a giant computer that stood two stories tall and weighed thirty tons. This super computer was a secret military project during World War II that was carried out by Jon Mauchly and John Presper Eckert Junior. ENIAC was invented to speed up the mathematical calculations that were needed to make ballistic firing tables for the Army and to design atomic weaponry. This super computer could add 5,000 numbers in one second. This might not seem like very fast compared to today’s technology, but this was a 1,000 times faster than any machine at this time.

ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It was introduced on February 15, 1946 and was the very first digital and electronically run computer. It was created in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and its original purpose was to calculate artillery firing tables during World War 2. The ENIAC weighed 30 tons and filled up an entire extremely large room with its many parts. Its complexity was prominent, containing approximately 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, thousands of switches, and 1,500 relays. It produced calculations that, if done by hand, would have taken much longer to achieve. For example in one second, the ENIAC could solve 5,000 additions.

The ENIAC was the first computer to ever work successfully. ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer but for now we will call it ENIAC. The ENIAC’s design and construction was funded by the United States Army and the total cost was around $487,000. The basic machine cycle was 200 microseconds or 5,000 cycles per second for operations on the 10-digit numbers. In one of these cycles, ENIAC could write a number to a register, read a number from a register, or add/subtract two numbers, several tubes burned out almost every day, leaving it nonfunctional about half the time. Special high-reliability tubes were not available until 1948. Most of these failures occurred during the warm-up and cool-down periods.

1946: Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and get financing from the Census Bureau to manufacture the UNIVAC, the first business workstation for business and government applications.eniac - World's first electronic, expansive scale, universally useful machine, constructed by Mauchly and Eckert, and initiated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. ENIAC reproduced on an advanced machine chip. See a clarification of ENIAC on a Chip by the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania.

　　The key period of the evolution of modern electronic computer is in between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. Not all of them were invented by the mathematician or physician. Among those machines were pioneering computers put together by english academics notably Manchester/Ferrenti Mark 1, built at Manchester University by Frederic Williams and Thomas Kilburn. And the EDSAC, Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator built by Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge University.