Second Generation Computer

Published at 10:21 AM in Computer

The discovery of the transistor in 1948 greatly influenced the development computer. Transistors replaced vacuum tubes in televisions, radios, and computers. As a result, the size of electronic machinery has reduced drastically. The transistor was used in computers began in 1956. In other findings in the form of magnetic core memory-assisting the development of second generation computers smaller, faster, more reliable, and more energy efficient than their predecessors. The first machine that utilizes this new technology is a supercomputer. IBM makes supercomputers, Stretch and Sprery-Rand makes a computer named LARC. These computers, which was developed for atomic energy laboratories, could handle large amounts of data, a capability that is needed by researchers atoms. The machine was very expensive and tend to be too complex for business computing needs, thereby limiting its popularity. There are only two LARC has ever installed and used: one at the Lawrence Radiation Labs in Livermore, California, and the other in the U.S. Navy Research and Development Center in Washington DC

In the early 1960s, began to appear successful second generation computers in business, in universities and in government. The computers of this second generation is fully computer using transistors. They also have components that can be associated with the computer at this time: a printer, storage, disk, memory, operating system and programs. One important example is the computer on the IBM 1401 which is widely accepted in the industry. In 1965, nearly all big businesses use computers to process the second generation of financial information.

The program stored in the computer and programming language that is in it gives flexibility to the computer. Flexibility is increased performance at a reasonable price for business use. With this concept, the computer could print customer purchase invoices and then run a product design or calculate payroll. Some programming languages began to appear at that time. Programming language Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) and FORTRAN (Formula Translator) came into common use. This programming language replaces the complicated machine with the words, sentences, and mathematical formulas are more easily understood by humans. This allows a person to program and manage the computer.