"Whether it's a big tower, or a small digital 20 question toy you bought at Walmart, computers have become a part of our daily lives, especially during quarantine with distance learning."
-Jackson evans, 7th grade
Whether it's a big tower, or a small digital 20 question toy you bought at Walmart, computers have become a part of our daily lives, especially during quarantine with distance learning. Computers have been around since the late 1940’s, those early models are known as first generation computers.
Take a look at your phone, your laptop, or maybe your Nintendo switch, look at how small they are. Most typical device owners say their devices are bad, but in the first gen computer era, it would take multiple large rooms to only cover a 100th of the power you have packed in your phone. These computers used vacuum tubes and magnetic drums to run their processes but this all changed in 1956, the beginning of second generation computers.
The replacement of vacuum tubes with transistors was a major stride in computing, while this was subject to change, transistors increased the processing power in these computers by an incredible amount, along with making these computers a lot smaller and compact but they still had to cover a room or two.
By 1964, transistors were being shrunken down and placed on silicon chips. This also majorly increased the processing power of these computers, but also created the very first computers that used a keyboard and a monitor for interaction. This then led to the first home computers.
In 1972, Intel joined the computer industry, they started making chips or microprocessors, the first Intel chip to be released was the Intel 4004. It put all the computer components together in one single chip, what took up an entire room now fits in the palm of your hand.
Finally, there was the fifth generation of computing, it contains all the modern day computers, smartphones, game consoles and gaming laptops, you name it! Now with the rise of real-time ray tracing and quantum computing, the 6th generation is very close in my eyes.
Take a look at your phone, your laptop, or maybe your Nintendo switch, look at how small they are. Most typical device owners say their devices are bad, but in the first gen computer era, it would take multiple large rooms to only cover a 100th of the power you have packed in your phone. These computers used vacuum tubes and magnetic drums to run their processes but this all changed in 1956, the beginning of second generation computers.
The replacement of vacuum tubes with transistors was a major stride in computing, while this was subject to change, transistors increased the processing power in these computers by an incredible amount, along with making these computers a lot smaller and compact but they still had to cover a room or two.
By 1964, transistors were being shrunken down and placed on silicon chips. This also majorly increased the processing power of these computers, but also created the very first computers that used a keyboard and a monitor for interaction. This then led to the first home computers.
In 1972, Intel joined the computer industry, they started making chips or microprocessors, the first Intel chip to be released was the Intel 4004. It put all the computer components together in one single chip, what took up an entire room now fits in the palm of your hand.
Finally, there was the fifth generation of computing, it contains all the modern day computers, smartphones, game consoles and gaming laptops, you name it! Now with the rise of real-time ray tracing and quantum computing, the 6th generation is very close in my eyes.
