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The first example of using vacuum tubes for computation, the Atanasoff–Berry computer, was demonstrated in 1939. Vacuum-tube computers were initially one-of-a-kind designs, but commercial models were introduced in the 1950s and sold in volumes ranging from single digits to thousands of units.
Vacuum-tube computers, now called first-generation computers, [1] are programmable digital computers using vacuum-tube logic circuitry. They were preceded by systems using electromechanical relays and followed by systems built from discrete transistors. Some later computers on the list had both vacuum tubes and transistors.
Whirlwind I was a Cold War-era vacuum-tube computer developed by the MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory for the U.S. Navy.Operational in 1951, it was among the first digital electronic computers that operated in real-time for output, and the first that was not simply an electronic replacement of older mechanical systems.
Add-subtract module (reconstructed) from Atanasoff–Berry computer. The machine was, however, the first to implement: Using vacuum tubes, rather than wheels, ratchets, mechanical switches, or telephone relays, allowing for greater speed than previous computers
7AK7 vacuum tubes in a 1956 UNIVAC I computer. UNIVAC I used 6,103 vacuum tubes, [24] [25] weighed 16,686 pounds (8.3 short tons; 7.6 t), consumed 125 kW, [26] and could perform about 1,905 operations per second running on a 2.25 MHz clock. The Central Complex alone (i.e. the processor and memory unit) was 4.3 m by 2.4 m by 2.6 m high.
Valves (vacuum tubes) seen on end in a recreation of the Colossus computer. Colossus was developed for the "Newmanry", [31] the section headed by the mathematician Max Newman that was responsible for machine methods against the twelve-rotor Lorenz SZ40/42 on-line teleprinter cipher machine (code-named Tunny, for tunafish).
IBM 701 processor frame, showing 1071 of the vacuum tubes Vacuum tube logic module from a 700 series IBM computer. The IBM 701 system [15] was composed of the following units: IBM 701 - Analytical Control Unit ; IBM 706 - Electrostatic Storage Unit (2048 words of Williams tube Memory) IBM 711 - Punched Card Reader (150 Cards/min.)
EDSAC 2 was an early vacuum tube computer (operational in 1958), the successor to the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC). It was the first computer to have a microprogrammed control unit and a bit-slice hardware architecture. [1] EDSAC 2 modular construction. First calculations were performed on the incomplete machine in 1957 ...