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A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems, including simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls, and factory devices like industrial robots. Computers are at the core of general-purpose devices such as personal computers and mobile devices such as smartphones.
The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer, announced to the public in 1946. It was Turing-complete, [ 45 ] digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.
Simple special-purpose devices like microwave ovens and remote controls are included, as are factory devices like industrial robots and computer-aided design, as well as general-purpose devices like personal computers and mobile devices like smartphones. Computers power the Internet, which links hundreds of millions of other computers and users.
However, its paper card writer/reader was unreliable and the regenerative drum contact system was mechanical. The machine's special-purpose nature and lack of changeable, stored program distinguish it from modern computers. [92] Computers whose logic was primarily built using vacuum tubes are now known as first generation computers.
These computers are capable of handling and processing very large amounts of data quickly. Mainframe computers are used in large institutions such as government, banks, and large corporations. They are measured in MIPS (million instructions per second) and can respond to hundreds of millions of users at a time [citation needed].
General-purpose technologies (GPTs) are technologies that can affect an entire economy (usually at a national or global level). [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] GPTs have the potential to drastically alter societies through their impact on pre-existing economic and social structures.
In the second generation, it became common for computers to have multiple addressable accumulators. On some computers, e.g., PDP-6, the same registers served as accumulators and index registers, making them an early example of general-purpose registers.
The Manchester Mark 1 was dismantled and scrapped in August 1950, [28] replaced a few months later by the first Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose computer. [1] Between 1946 and 1949, the average size of the design team working on the Mark 1 and its predecessor, the Baby, had been about four people.