Text 2. Further Development

By the late 1930s punched card machine techniques had become so well established and reliable that Howard Aiken in collaboration with engineers at IBM constructed a large automatic computer Mark I. This device was used in World War II to help aim guns. It could compute complex tables for the U.S. Navy and used a paper tape to store instructions.

In fact, the start of World War II produced a large need for computer capacity, especially for the military purposes. Thus in 1942, John P. Ecker and, John W. Mauhcly decided to build a high - speed electronic computer to do this job. This machine became known as ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator). ENIAC was about 1,000 times faster then the previous generation of relay computers and used 18,000 vacuum tubes. ENIAC is commonly accepted as the first successful high - speed electronic digital computer.

In 1945, mathematician John Von Neumann proved that data and programs could be stored in the same space. It meant that a computer itself could alter either its program or its internal data. Von Neumann made a special type of machine instruction, called conditional control transfer, which allowed to stop the program sequence and to start it again at any point and to store all instruction programs together with data in the same memory unit. Because of these techniques, computing and programming became much faster, more flexible and more efficient. As a result of those improvements, the first generation of modern programmed electronic computers was built in 1947. This group included computers using Random Access Memory (RAM) designed to give almost constant access to any particular piece of information.

Answer the questions

1. What did Howard Aiken and IBM engineers construct?

2.What device was used in World War II to help aim guns.?

3. What machine did John P. Eckert, and John W. Mauhcly build?

4. What purposes was the machine created for?

5. Did ENIAC work on transistors or on vacuum tubes?

6. What did John Von Neumann prove?

7. What type of machine instruction did John Von Neumann write?

8. What did a new instruction allow a computer to do?

9. What unit was able to store instructions and data?

10. When was the first generation of programmed electronic computers built?

Text 3. Some First Computer Models

The work on introducing electronics into the design of computers was going on. Vacuum tubes were ideal for use in computers. They did not have mechanical moving parts and switched the flows of electrons far faster than any other mechanical device. They were relatively reliable, and operated hundreds of hours before failure. The first vacuum tube computer, capable of performing thousands of related computations was called ABC - the Atanasoff-Berry-Computer. It used 45 vacuum tubes for internal logic and capacitors for storage. From the ABC a number of vacuum-tube digital computers were developed. Early in the 50's two important engineering discoveries changed the image of the electronic computer field. These discoveries were the magnetic core memory and the transistor-circuit element. These technical discoveries quickly found their way into new models of digital computers. Thus, RAM capacity increased from 8,000 to 64,000 words in commercially available machines with access time of 2 to 3 MS (Milliseconds).

However, the machines of those days were very expensive to purchase or even to rent. Besides, they were particularly expensive to operate because of the cost of expanding programming. Such computers were mostly found in large computer centres operated by industry, government, and private laboratories - staffed with many programmers and support personnel. IBM introduced the 701model in 1953. It was the first commercially successful computer. Early languages we FORTRAN, LISP, COBOL, BASIC

and ALGOL. Although never widely used, ALGOL is the basis for many of today's languages.

Answer the questions

1. Why were vacuum tubes ideal for the use in computers?

2. Who invented ABC?

3. How many vacuum tubes did it use?

4. What important engineering discoveries changed the image of the electronic-computer field?

5. How did RAM capacity increase after discoveries?

6. What were the main disadvantages of the first computer models?

7. Where were the first computers used?

8. Why did they need many programmers and support personnel?

9. What model did IBM introduce in 1953?

10. What early computer languages do you know?

Text 4. Four Generations of Computers

The first vacuum tubes computers are referred to as the first generation of computers. Transistors, smaller and more reliable devices invented in 1948, improved computers and made them faster. Computers of the second generation used a large number of transistors and were able to reduce computational time. In the 1970's, vacuum tube deposition by transistors became the norm, and entire assemblies became available on tiny "chips." It became possible to create cheaper computer systems. Computers based on the integrated circuit technology were called the third generation of computers.

In 1975, the first personal computer the ALTAIR was marketed in a kit form. The Altair had no keyboard, but a panel of switches to enter the information. Bill Gates and his partners wrote BASIC compiler for the machine. Next year the Apple Company began to market PCs in a kit form: It included a monitor and a keyboard. Soon different companies, such as Microsoft, Apple and many smaller PC related companies came on the market.

In 1980's, a very large scale of integration with hundreds of thousands of transistors placed on a single chip, became common. Personal computers on microprocessors could handle about 4,000,000 instructions per second. The era of the fourth generation began.

In the early 1980s, however, the Japanese government announced a gigantic plan to design and build a new generation of supercomputers. which was supposed to perform much calculation using massive parallel processing. It aimed to create an "epoch-making computer" with a platform for future developments in artificial intelligence.

However, to this date, there are only four generations of computers, the "fifth generation" is but the name of a Japan's national research project.

The fifth generation of computers is only in the minds of advance research scientists and being tested out in the laboratories. These computers will be under Artificial Intelligence(AI), They will be able to take commands and carry out instructions in a audio visual way. Many of the operations which require low human intelligence will be performed by these machines.