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1. First Generation (1939-1954) - vacuum
tube
1937 - John V. Atanasoff designed
the first digital electronic computer
1939 - Atanasoff and Clifford
Berry demonstrate in Nov. the ABC prototype
1941 - Konrad Zuse in Germany
developed in secret the Z3
1943 - In Britain, the Colossus
was designed in secret at Bletchley Park to decode
German messages
1944 - Howard Aiken developed
the Harvard Mark I mechanical computer for the
Navy
1945 - John W. Mauchly and J.
Presper Eckert built ENIAC at U of PA for the
U.S. Army
1946 - Mauchly and Eckert start
Electronic Control Co., received grant from National
Bureau of Standards to build a ENIAC-type computer
with magnetic tape input/output, renamed UNIVAC.
1948 - Howard Aiken developed
the Harvard Mark III electronic computer with
5000 tubes
1948 - U of Manchester in Britain
developed the SSEM Baby electronic computer with
CRT memory
1949 - Mauchly and Eckert in
March successfully tested the BINAC stored-program
computer for Northrop Aircraft, with mercury delay
line memory and a primitive magentic tape drive;
Remington Rand bought EMCC Feb. 1950 and provided
funds to finish UNIVAC
1950- Commander William C. Norris
led Engineering Research Associates to develop
the Atlas, based on the secret code-breaking computers
used by the Navy in WWII; the Atlas was 38 feet
long, 20 feet wide, and used 2700 vacuum tubes
1951 - S. A. Lebedev developed
the MESM computer in Russia
1951 - Remington Rand successfully
tested UNIVAC
1952 - Remington Rand bought
the ERA in Dec. 1951 and combined the UNIVAC product
line in 1952: the ERA 1101 computer became the
UNIVAC 1101. The UNIVAC I was used in November
to calculate the presidential election returns
and successfully predict the winner, although
it was not trusted by the TV networks who refused
to use the prediction.
1954 - The SAGE aircraft-warning
system was the largest vacuum tube computer system
ever built
2.Second Generation Computers (1954 -1959)
- transistor
1950 - National Bureau of Standards
(NBS) introduced its Standards Eastern Automatic
Computer (SEAC) with 10,000 newly developed germanium
diodes in its logic circuits, and the first magnetic
disk drive designed by Jacob Rabinow
1953 - Tom Watson, Jr., led IBM
to introduce the model 604 computer, its first
with transistors, that became the basis of the
model 608 of 1957, the first solid-state computer
for the commercial market.
1955 - IBM introduced the 702
business computer; Watson on the cover of Time
magazine March 28
1956 - Bendix G-15A small business
computer sold for only $45,000, designed by Harry
Huskey of NBS
1959 - General Electric Corporation
delivered its Electronic Recording Machine Accounting
(ERMA) computing system to the Bank of America
in California; based on a design by SRI, the ERMA
system employed Magnetic Ink Character Recognition
(MICR) as the means to capture data from the checks
and introduced automation in banking that continued
with ATM machines in 1974
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