GENERATIONS OF COMPUTER (on the basis of hardware developments)

FIRST GENERATION


TIME PERIOD : 1940's-1950's


TECHNOLOGY USED : Vacuum Tubes


SIZE AND SPEED : Huge, taking up entire rooms, Slow speed


LANGUAGE USED : Machine language


COST : System and working cost very high.


OTHER FEATURES : Used a great deal of electricity. Generated a lot of heat. Input was based on punched cards and paper tape, and output was displayed on printouts.


EXAMPLE : UNIVAC and ENIAC


SECOND GENERATION


TIME PERIOD : 1950's- 1960's


TECHNOLOGY USED : Transistors


SIZE AND SPEED : Lesser size and increased speed


LANGUAGE USED : Assembly language and languages like COBOL and FORTRAN


COST : Cost decreased


OTHER FEATURES : More efficient and reliable. Though the transistors still generated a great deal of heat that subjected the computer to damage, it was a vast improvement over the vacuum tube. Second-generation computers still relied on punched cards for input and printouts for output.


EXAMPLE : UNIVAC 1108, IBM 1401, CDC 1604


THIRD GENERATION


TIME PERIOD : late 1960's-1970's


TECHNOLOGY USED : Integrated Circuit


SIZE AND SPEED : Size Lesser and speed further increased


LANGUAGE USED : Operating System was developed.


COST : Cost decreased further


OTHER FEATURES : Instead of punched cards and printouts, users interacted with third generation computers through keyboards and monitors and interfaced with an operating system, which allowed the device to run many different applications at one time with a central program that monitored the memory. Computers for the first time became accessible to a mass audience because they were smaller and cheaper than their predecessors.


EXAMPLE : IBM-360 series, Honeywell Model 316, Honeywell – 6000 series, CDC – 1700.


FOURTH GENERATION


TIME PERIOD : 1970's-today


TECHNOLOGY USED : Microprocessor


SIZE AND SPEED : Reduced size and tremendous speed


LANGUAGE USED : High Level Languages like PASCAL, COBOL, C, C++, JAVA


COST : Reduced Cost


OTHER FEATURES : Microprocessors also moved out of the realm of desktop computers and into many areas of life as more and more everyday products began to use microprocessors. As these small computers became more powerful, they could be linked together to form networks, which eventually led to the development of the Internet. Fourth generation computers also saw the development of GUIs, the mouse and handheld devices.


EXAMPLE : Intel 4004, Apple Macintosh


FIFTH GENERATION


TIME PERIOD : 1990's -today


TECHNOLOGY USED : Microprocessor


SIZE AND SPEED : Reduced size and tremendous speed


LANGUAGE USED : Based on Artificial intelligence


COST : Reduced Cost


OTHER FEATURES : Fifth generation computing devices, based on artificial intelligence, are still in development, though there are some applications, such as voice recognition, that are being used today. The goal of fifth-generation computing is to develop devices that respond to natural language input and are capable of learning and self-organization.


EXAMPLE : Parallel Inference Machine

Note: Artificial Intelligence is the branch of computer science concerned with making computers behave like humans.

Note: Voice Recognition is the field of computer science that deals with designing computer systems that can recognize spoken words.