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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.
First-generation computers with data channels (I/O channels) had a basic DMA interface to the channel cable. The second generation saw both simpler, e.g., channels on the CDC 6000 series had no DMA, and more sophisticated designs, e.g., the 7909 on the IBM 7090 had limited computational, conditional branching and interrupt system.
ENIAC (/ ˈ ɛ n i æ k /; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) [1] [2] was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Other computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was the first to have them all.
Electrically operated display devices have developed from electromechanical systems for display of text, up to all-electronic devices capable of full-motion 3D color graphic displays. Electromagnetic devices, using a solenoid coil to control a visible flag or flap, were the earliest type, and were used for text displays such as stock market ...
It is one of the first computers to use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) text editor and has a bit-mapped display. The Alto did not succeed commercially, but it had a significant influence on the development of future computer systems. The Alto was designed for an operating system based on a GUI, later using the desktop metaphor.
The first computer to use magnetic tape. EDVAC could have new programs loaded from the tape. Proposed by John von Neumann, it was installed at the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, US. 1951: Australia CSIRAC used to play music – the first time a computer was used as a musical instrument. 1951: US
A total of 2.8 million units were shipped before the TI-99/4A was discontinued in March 1984, [1] [38] perhaps the largest installed base among all personal computers. [26] The 99/4A became the first in a series of home computers to be orphaned by their manufacturer over the next few years, along with the Coleco Adam, Mattel Aquarius, Timex ...
A month later, they renamed their next project to "the UNIVAC." Later in October of that year, the duo drafted U.S. patent 2,629,827, which was a mercury acoustic delay-line electronic memory system. [8] The patent was eventually accepted in February 1953 as the "first device to gain widespread acceptance as a reliable computer memory system."