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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.
A vacuum-tube computer, now termed a first-generation computer, is a computer that uses vacuum tubes for logic circuitry. While the history of mechanical aids to computation goes back centuries, if not millennia, the history of vacuum tube computers is confined to the middle of the 20th century. Lee De Forest invented the triode in 1906.
In 1958, Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments invented the hybrid integrated circuit (hybrid IC), [1] which had external wire connections, making it difficult to mass-produce. [2] In 1959, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor invented the monolithic integrated circuit (IC) chip. [3] [2] It was made of silicon, whereas Kilby's chip was made of ...
An open PDP-8/E with its logic modules behind the front panel and one dual TU56 DECtape drive at the top A "Straight-8" running at the Stuttgart Computer Museum. The earliest PDP-8 model, informally known as a "Straight-8", was introduced on 22 March 1965 priced at $18,500 [3] (equivalent to about $178,900 in 2023 [4]).
The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. [ 3 ] The Z3 was built with 2,600 relays, implementing a 22- bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz. [ 1 ]
CSIRAC (/ ˈsaɪræk /; Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer), originally known as CSIR Mk 1, was Australia 's first digital computer, and the fifth stored program computer in the world. [1] It is the oldest surviving first-generation electronic computer [2] (the Zuse Z4 at the Deutsches Museum is older, but was ...
TX-0, TX-2, DEC PDP-1. 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.
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. A second-generation computer, through the late 1950s and 1960s featured ...