(3) Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) (1952) . Eckert and Mauchley
built UNIVAC, the first computer offered as a commercial product. In early 1951, the
Census Bureau acquired the first UNIVAC, which remained operational until 1963. The
first computer acquired for data processing and record keeping by a business was
another UNIVAC, which was installed in 1954 at General Electric's Appliance Park in
Louisville, Kentucky.
Figure 1-20. UNIVAC, the first computer offered commercially.
1-19. SECOND-GENERATION SOLID-STATE COMPUTERS (1959)
The transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories in 1947. It took nearly a decade
of research to perfect the solid-state technology that the transistor represented. When
transistors were applied to computers in 1959, another milestone was achieved.
Second-generation solid-state computers were better, faster, and more efficient
because of transistors.
transistor: a
type of
electronic circuitry found in
second generation computers;
smaller, faster, and more reliable than vacuum tubes, but inferior to third-
generation integrated circuits.
solid state: pertaining to electronic devices, transistors or crystals that can
control current without the use of moving parts, heated filaments, or vacuum
tubes.
a. Reduced Size. When transistors replaced vacuum tubes, computers got
smaller. You will recall that first-generation computers, such as ENIAC, were as large
as silos and weighed about 30 tons.
MD0057
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