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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.
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 ...
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 ...
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.
NCR 304 computer system Camp Pendleton, California. The NCR 304 computer, announced in 1957, [1] first delivered in 1959, [2] [3] was National Cash Register (NCR)'s first transistor-based computer. The 304 was developed and manufactured in cooperation with General Electric, [4] where it was also used internally. [5]
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 ...
The Manchester Baby was designed as a test-bed for the Williams tube, an early form of computer memory, rather than as a practical computer.Work on the machine began in 1947, and on 21 June 1948 the computer successfully ran its first program, consisting of 17 instructions written to find the highest proper factor of 2 18 (262,144) by trying every integer from 2 18 − 1 downwards.
The development of transistor technology, followed by the invention of integrated circuit chips, led to revolutionary breakthroughs. Transistor-based computers and, later, integrated circuit-based computers enabled digital systems to gradually replace analog systems, increasing both efficiency and processing power.