1st Generation Computers: Inspirations and Vacuum Tubes

1st Generation Computers: Inspirations and Vacuum Tubes

1941 - 1958

In 1936 Alan Turing created the Turing Machine, a kind of influence and precursor to modern day electrical computers.
Turing Machines are abstract computer models that perform logical operations in analog form. They are used to prove abstract theorems in computer science.
Within the Turing machine a line of cells or 'tape' and a single active cell or 'head' have different colors and states. The tape has a variation of colors and the head has a few different states. The way it is operated is that the machine follows a rule, it first looks at the color of the tape, then the state of the head, then it decides what the new state of the head should be, what color tape to write on and whether to move left or right. Since this was not a general all purpose computer it wasn't owned or used by the public, it was mainly used by scientists.

From the strife of World War 2 the first general purpose computer was born from a partnership between the U.S. Government and The University of Pennsylvania. The ENIAC or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer was created by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. The same team also created the UNIVAC, short for Universal Automatic Computer which was meant for commercial use.

These first generation computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and talked in machine language rather than a software. Meaning that in order to talk with the computer the operator needed to feed it punched cards or tape and the machine would respond by creating a print out. The memory of the computer was stored onto a magnetic drum.
These computers were often large and take up whole rooms, they could tackle one problem at a time meaning one would be at this computer for an extended amount of time and due to this they would heat up take up a lot of electricity. Making this computer expensive both hardware wise and resource wise.




sources cited:
http://www.wolframscience.com/prizes/tm23/turingmachine.html
http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Hardware_Software/2002/FiveGenerations.asp
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0125787/firgen.htm