Technology research on history of computers 03/07/2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 HAVARD MARK 1 1 UNIVAC 2 Z3 2 HAVARD MARK 1 It was considered as the first digital computer. The mark 1 used mechanical telephone relay switches to store information and accepted data it processed.
This was not a computer but instead was a highly sophisticated calculator. It was large in size measuring over 51 feet in length . It had many parts, most of them moving mechanical parts, which made mark 1 not only huge but also unreliable. The Harvard mark 1 http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa052198.
htm Eniac(electronic numerical integration and calculator) This one was actually considered as a first generation computer .It marked the beginning of the computer era. It solved a problem that would take a team of mathematicians three days in twenty seconds. Just like the Harvard mark 1 it was large in size, it weighed 30 tons and occupied 1500 square feet and contained over 17,000 vacuum tubes, which consumed a lot of electricity and produced tremendous amount of heat. The ENIAC http://blackboard.
madison.tec.wi.us/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_224_1&frame=top UNIVAC This one came after the EDVAC and EDSAC to employ the stored program concept making it a programmable computer. It solved problems by entering instructions that were stored on a paper tape.
The baby This was world's first stored-program electronic digital computer successfully executed its first program. Instructions could be read successively at electronic speed, and that running a different program only involved resetting part of the memory using a simple keyboard rather than reconfiguring the electronic circuitry (this could take days on ENIAC. It provided the basic stored-program concept. Z3 The speed of the Z3 was comparable to that of the Harvard Mark I. The Z3 could perform three or four additions per second and multiply two numbers together in 4 to 5 seconds. The Z3's floating-point representation of numbers made it more flexible than the Mark I.
The Z3 was the first machine in the world that could be said to be a fully working programmable computer with automatic control of its operations. Konrad zuse inventor of Z3 http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050298.htm
