The first computer |
1946 - 1955 |
Now that electronics made sufficient progress and that the first computers proved reliable, the computers will be able apparaitre, born of the need to carry out operations increasingly complex .
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| December 1947 : Invention of the transistor by William Bradford Shockley, Walter H. Brattain and John Bardeen in the laboratories of Bell Telephone. |
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June 1948 :NewMan, Williams and their team of the university of Manchester finish a prototype machine called Manchester Mark I with a new type of memory made up of cathode ray tubes: to store a bit of information, a cathode ray lit a point on the tube which remained lit then. For the lira, it was enough to point the ray at the same place and to make a measurement of voltage with an electrode placed on other side of the tube! The Mark I thus had a memory of 1024 bits holding into only one tube. |
September 1948 : The ENIAC is improved by the addition of a table of preset instructions. The program entered the ENIAC could thus use each one of these instructions. One can consider that this modification transforms the ENIAC out of computer, even if the program always entered by recablage.
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august 1949 : B>P. Eckert and J. Mauchly, having formed their own company, develop the first computer bi-processeur the BINAC for US Navy. The two processors carried out the same operations in parallel to increase the reliability of calculations.
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1950 : The computer of Konrad Zuse, the Z4 manufactured during the war, finally went up at the polytechnic school of Zurich then modified to be able to carry out jumps and conditional branches. During the execution of a program, 2 instructions were read in advance and pretreated. It is about the first implementation of a pipeline in a computer. The machine will be used until 1955 then transferred in France and used until 1960.
1950 : Invention of the assembleur by Maurice V Wilkes university of Cambridge. Front, the programming was carried out directly into binary.
| 1951 : Development of the tambour of masse magnetic ERA 1101. It is about the first mass memory. Capacity: 1 Mo |
1951 : Invention of the first compilator A0 by Grace Murray Hopper who allows to generate a binary program starting from a source code.
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| 1952 : IBM product its first computer, the IBM 701 for American defense. 19 specimens will be produced. This machine had a cathode ray tube storage of 2048 or 4096 words of 36 bits and could carry out 16000 additions or 2200 multiplications a second. The first machine will be installed in Los Alamos (see photo) for the project of US thermonuclear bomb. |
1952 : IBM is contacted to put in building site the production of the computers of the network SAGE of which the Whirlwind was the prototype. About fifty machines, bearing the name AN/FSQ7, will be produced. Each machine comprised 75000 tubes, weighed 275 tons and consumed 750 kWh.
1952 : The first French computer, the CUBA (Binary All-purpose computer of the Armament), is built by the company SEA.
| 1953 : Invention of the ferrite core storage in the Whirlwind who will advantageously replace all the not very reliable systems used until now. |
1955 First data-processing network with commercial goal: SABRE (Semi Automated Business Related Environment) realized by IBM. It connects 1200 teleprinters through the United States for the reservation of the flights of the company American Airlines.
| 1955 : IBM launch the IBM 704 developed by Gene Amdahl. It is about the first commercial machine having a mathematical coprocessor. Power: 5 kFLOPS (thousands of operations in floating point a second). It is often considered that this machine marks the beginning of the era of super the computers dedicated to the scientific computation. It used a ferrite core storage of 32768 words of 36 bits and went 3 times more quickly than the IBM 701. Thanks to the ferrite cores, this machine was highly reliable (for the time) and broke down only one time per week: -) It is on this machine that will be developed the language FORTRAN. |
Wallace Eckert of at IBM and its team finish the SSEC (Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator). This hybrid machine is made up of several systems of storage: 8 vacuum tube
, 150 word on a memory with relay and 66 loop of tape paper can store on the whole total 20000 word of 20 digit with format DCB. This machine can read its instruction of one of loop of paper, and even même in memory, what in fact also a computer with program record (even if the memory size be tiny). From the point of view of IBM, it is thus about the first true computer.
May 1949 : Maurice V Wilkes and its team of the university of Cambridge develop the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer) based on the design EDVAC of Von Neuman. The memory, of a size of 512 words of 17 bits, consisted of delay lines with mercury. The bits to be stored were converted into waves ultrasonic and emitted at the end of a mercury tank. They were collected with the different end and were emitted. Only the bits in electric form were accessible. This system was slower but much more reliable than the tubes électrostatiques.
1949 - 1951 : First computer real time: the Whirlwind create with the MIT by Jay Forrester, Ken Olsen and their team. The search of the performance, the reliability and the speed of response in this computer brought great progress. This machine was also the prototype of the computers used for the data-processing network of defense American 
1951 : P. Eckert and J. Mauchly, having resold their company with Remington Rand, launch the UNIVAC I (UNIversal Automatic Computer). It is about the first commercial computer of the history. The first barrel sold at the office of census Americain for the moderate amount of 750000 $ for the computer and 185000 $ for the high-speed printer. It was able to carry out 8333 additions or 555 multiplications a second. 56 specimens were sold.