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BIT100 - L2 S1 - History of Computers
BIT100 - L2 S1 - History of Computers
INTRODUCTION TO
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
• Computer generations
• Types of computers
• Mechanical era(1623-1900)
• It had a series of wheels with teeth which could be turned using hands.
Mechanical Era
• High cost
• .
Second generation 1955-
1964
• Bell Lab invented the transistor – function like vacuum tubes but
smaller, lower power consumption, more reliable.
• Lower cost
Second generation 1955-
1964
• Magnetic core memories were used as main memory which
is a random-access non-volatile memory
•.
Third generation 1963-
1971
•Jack Kilby developed Integrated Circuit (IC)
• An IC combined several electronic computers on a small silicon chip
• IBM introduced System/360 – a highly configurable, highly backward
compatible, mainframe computer system.
• Small Scale Integration and Medium Scale Integration technology
were implemented in CPU, I/O processors etc.
• Smaller & better performance
• Comparatively lesser cost
• Faster processors
Third generation 1963-
1971
•In the beginning magnetic core memories were used. Later they were
replaced by semiconductor memories (RAM & ROM)
•Floppy disks & magnetic tapes were used for backup memory
Fourth generation 1972-
1984
•CRT screen, laser & ink jet printers, scanners etc were developed.
•Floppy disks & magnetic tapes were used for backup memory
Fourth generation 1972-
1984
•Parallelism, pipelining cache memory and virtual memory were applied
in a better way
•WWW, HTML, HTTP, Web TV, java, DVD, iPod, Youtube etc
•Examples are:
• iMac ,
• Sun ultra workstation etc
Categories of
Computers/Machines
•Much as we can talk of the current generation of computers, they
come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
•They have been used for numerous but generally for the processing of
enormous volumes of data,
• doing the census count,
• forecasting weather,
• designing aircraft,
• modelling molecules,
• and breaking encryption codes.
Supercomputers
• which has a display screen and a keyboard and can input and
output data but cannot by itself process data.
• notebooks (laptops),
• netbooks,
• mobile internet devices (MIDs),
• They have little processing power, and have screens between 8.9 and 12 inches
wide diagonally.
• Some PDAs have touch-sensitive screens. Some also connect to desktop computers
for sending or receiving information.
Related concepts
•
•Microcontrollers , also called embedded computers