🔧 Core Technology: Vacuum Tubes
- Used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory.
- Vacuum tubes acted as switches and amplifiers but generated a lot of heat.
- Required air conditioning and consumed large amounts of electricity.
🖥️ Key Characteristics
- Size: Extremely large—filled entire rooms.
- Speed: Very slow; operations in milliseconds.
- Programming: Done in machine language (binary).
- Input/Output: Punch cards, paper tape, magnetic tape.
- Reliability: Frequent breakdowns due to tube failures.
- Cost: Very expensive to build and maintain.
🧠 Memory & Storage
- Magnetic drums used for memory.
- No modern RAM or hard drives.
- Sequential data access resulted in slow processing.
🧪 Applications
- Scientific calculations
- Military tasks and cryptography
- Ballistics, weather forecasting, atomic research
🧑🔬 Notable Examples
| Computer | Year | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ENIAC | 1945 | First general-purpose electronic computer with 18,000 vacuum tubes. |
| UNIVAC I | 1951 | First commercial computer; used in business and government. |
| IBM 701 | 1952 | IBM’s first scientific computer. |
| EDSAC | 1949 | First computer to store programs in memory. |
| Colossus | 1943 | Used by British codebreakers during WWII. |
✅ Advantages
- Introduced electronic computing
- Could perform thousands of calculations per second
- Foundation for future computing generations
❌ Disadvantages
- Huge size and high power consumption
- Limited programming abilities
- Frequent hardware failures
- Specialized environments needed