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While first-generation computers typically had a small number of index registers or none, several lines of second-generation computers had large numbers of index registers, e.g., Atlas, Bendix G-20, IBM 7070. The first generation had pioneered the use of special facilities for calling subroutines, e.g., TSX on the IBM 709. In the second ...
e. The history of computing hardware covers the developments from early simple devices to aid calculation to modern day computers. The first aids to computation were purely mechanical devices which required the operator to set up the initial values of an elementary arithmetic operation, then manipulate the device to obtain the result.
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. Lee De Forest invented the triode in 1906.
The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest known geared computing device. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC. [8]
The fourth generation computers began with the shipment of CPS-1, the first commercial microprocessor microcomputer in 1972 and for the purposes of this list marks the end of the "early" third generation computer era. Note that third generation computers were offered well into the 1990s. The list is organized by delivery year to customers or ...
The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals.
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. A second-generation computer, through the late 1950s and 1960s featured ...
1990s. The 32-bit microprocessor dominated the consumer market in the 1990s. Processor clock speeds increased by more than tenfold between 1990 and 1999, and 64-bit processors began to emerge later in the decade. In the 1990s, microprocessors no longer used the same clock speed for the processor and the RAM.