Abstract
This chapter considers a selection of computers developed during the 1950s, and it includes a selection of vacuum tube-based computers as well as transistor computers. One of the drivers for the design and development of more powerful computers was the perceived threat of the Soviet Union. This led to an arms race between the two superpowers, and it was clear that computing technology would play an important role in developing sophisticated weapon and defence systems. The SAGE air defence system developed for the United States and Canada was an early example of the use of computer technology for the military. Early IBM computers such as the IBM 701 and 704 computers are discussed, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of the invention of the transistor by William Shockley and others at Bell Labs.
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- 1.
ENIAC contained over 18,000 vacuum tubes and the AN/FSQ-7 computer used in SAGE contained 55,000 vacuum tubes.
- 2.
It was not a fully transistorized computer in that it employed a small number of vacuum tubes in its clock generator.
References
O’Regan G (2013) Giants of computing. Springer, London
O’Regan G (2015) Pillars of computing. Springer, Cham
Shockley W (1950) Electrons and holes in semiconductors with applications to transistor electronics. Van Nostrand, New York
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O’Regan, G. (2016). Early Commercial Computers and the Invention of the Transistor. In: Introduction to the History of Computing. Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33138-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33138-6_6
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