Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A transistor computer, now often called a second-generation computer, [1] is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The first generation of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, were bulky and unreliable.
The bipolar junction transistor, the first type of transistor to be mass-produced, is a combination of two junction diodes and is formed of either a thin layer of p-type semiconductor sandwiched between two n-type semiconductors (an n–p–n transistor), or a thin layer of n-type semiconductor sandwiched between two p-type semiconductors (a p ...
For the purposes of this article, the term "second generation" refers to computers using discrete transistors, even when the vendors referred to them as "third-generation". By 1960 transistorized computers were replacing vacuum tube computers, offering lower cost, higher speeds, and reduced power consumption.
TRADIC. This is a list of transistorized computers, which were digital computers that used discrete transistors as their primary logic elements. Discrete transistors were a feature of logic design for computers from about 1960, when reliable transistors became economically available, until monolithic integrated circuits displaced them in the 1970s.
The world's first transistor computer was built at the University of Manchester in November 1953. The computer was built by Richard Grimsdale, then a research student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and later a professor of Electronic Engineering at Sussex University. The machine used point-contact transistors, made in small ...
The first transistor hi-fi system was developed by engineers at GE and demonstrated at the University of Philadelphia in 1955. [9] In terms of commercial production, The Fisher TR-1 was the first "all transistor" preamplifier, which became available mid-1956. [10] In 1961, a company named Transis-tronics released a solid-state amplifier, the ...
Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (metal oxide semiconductor) chips were developed and then widely adopted, enabling complex semiconductor and telecommunications technologies.
Flyable TRADIC was used to establish the feasibility of using an airborne solid-state computer as the control element of a bombing and navigation system. Leprechaun [6] [7] [8] was a second-generation laboratory research transistor digital computer designed to explore direct-coupled transistor logic (DCTL). The TRADIC Phase One computer was ...