Electronic Computer Era

# Explain the Electronic computer era in details.

• The Electronic Computer Era

The computers of this age are developed by using electronic components like a vacuum tube, transistors IC, VLSI, etc. These computers are smaller, faster and more reliable.

• The ENIAC (1943-1946)

In 1946, John W. Mauchly and J.presper Eckert constructed ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrated and Calculator), at the Moore School of Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania. USA ENIAC was the first popular general purpose all electronic digital computers. John Von Neumann was the consultant of the ENIAC project.

It was a very large machine weighing about 30 tons and containing about 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 5 million soldered joints and it consumed 160 kilowatts.

• The EDVAC (1946-1952)

EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was developed by Dr.John Von Neumann,and a member of the Moore School of Engineering of the Unversity of Pennslyvania,J.P Eckert, and J.W Mauchly. The EDVAC is used for more school personnel and the Ballistics Research Laboratory of the US Army,which was based on Jhon Von Neumann`s ideas of Stored Program".

·        EDSAC

EDSAC, in full Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, the first full-size stored-program computer, built at the University of Cambridge, by Maurice Wilkes and others to provide a formal computing service for users. EDSAC was built according to the principles of  Hungarian American scientist John von Neumann. Wilkes built the machine chiefly to study computer programming issues, which he realized would become as important as the hardware details.

• The UNIVAC (1951)

UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was developed by J.P.Eckert and J. Mauchly in 1951. It was the first computer manufactured for commercial use and general purpose digital computer.It was designed to handle both numeric and textual information. Before this, all the computers were either used for defense or census was by General Electrical Corporation in 1954.

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