The evolution of computers: meet the 5 generations!

Havard Mark 01, one of the first computers, weighed 5 tons and was over 2 meters high.

It's a fact that the computers we have today, whether at home or at work, are products of decades of development. In such a way that it is not wrong to think of an evolution of computers, which is not even close to ending.

Obviously, the first computers didn't look like the machines we have today, but they were extremely functional for their purposes. In fact, without them, perhaps we would never have managed to reach multiple cores and enjoy agile, multifaceted and very efficient machines.

In today's post, we are going to honor this story so dear to humanity, presenting the evolution of computers from their generations. Check out!

1th generation

We can say that the great milestone of the 1st generation of computers was the construction of robust and heavy machines with a single objective: to perform calculations. Thus, in 1930, Grace Hoper and Howard Aiken idealized the Harvard Mark 01, which was only built in 1934 at Harvard with its partner IBM.

To give us an idea, the machine was 17 meters long, 2,5 meters high and weighed 5 tons. Havard Mark 01 was nothing less than the first large-scale calculator, which performed the 4 arithmetic operations. In addition, it computed logarithm functions.

Another machine that was a great achievement for this generation was the ENIAC, created in 1946, being the first large-scale digital computer. The machine began to be built during the 2nd World War with the objective of calculating tactical trajectories. With a capacity of 5 operations per second, ENIAC occupied an area of ​​180 m².

2th generation

The IBM 7094 was the machine that marked the beginnings of the 2nd generation of computers. Initially developed for control management in nuclear power plants, the computer debuted a Belgian technology in place of valves, the transistor. This material is still used today in plaques.

Unlike tubes, transistors have small dimensions, which made the computers that used them 100x smaller than the 1st generation. After all, the Eniac weighed 30 tons while the IBM 7094 weighed just under 1 ton.

In addition, the evolution of computers was seen in the economy of new machines, either in energy consumption or in the price of components. However, the price of computers remained high, reaching the range of 2 million.

3th generation

With the advent of semiconductors in the 60s, computers became faster and more efficient. In this sense, productivity was increased and task execution time was reduced.

And that's how, in 1964, IBM launched the first machine to use integrated circuits, this being the IBM System 360. Despite the efficiency of semiconductors, the computer was still large, weighing more than its predecessors.

However, the IBM System 360 was extremely advanced for its time. The purpose of the machine was purely commercial and made the use of inserts a big trend. In addition, the 360 ​​allowed processing expansion, coining the concept of modularity.

By the way, it was in the 3rd generation of computers that keyboards appeared for typing and primitive monitors for observing operations.

4th generation

Now we enter the generation that coined the computers we use today. In this way, following the evolution of computers, the 4th generation machines were the first to receive the nickname of microcomputers. That's because they weighed less than 20 kg.

And the reduction was due to microprocessors. Thus, the tiny processing chips facilitated the paths of information technology, in addition to making it more accessible.

It follows from this, the emergence of Altair 8000 800, a machine purchased as an assembly kit from some US magazines. This machine was the basis for the advent of Pickupsoft. At the same time, Apple was created to simplify personal computing projects, because it wasn't as simple to use a computer as we do today.

Thus came the apple 01, with a graphical interface for some software, spreadsheets, databases and word processors. A great achievement of Apple was also the tendency to use the mouse.

5th generation

There are those who say that we are going through a time when the priority is the good use of clocks – number of processing cycles in 1s. In this sense, achieving high processing speeds is making room for the multiplicity of processing cores on a chip.

Today we already have processors with 4 cores, with a lot of power to execute simultaneous tasks. However, the greater the power the greater the energy consumed. Therefore, a major concern of the companies that manufacture the chips is the reduction of energy consumption, without the loss of quality.

Thus came the green processing. Processors like Intel are manufactured with microarchitecture, so the clocks are shorter and therefore consume less power. In addition, LED displays are being used as an environmentally friendly alternative to LCD screens.

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