The world's first computer, ENIAC, 1946, was born in the United States in February. It does not have the main features of modern computers-stored programs and program control.

The world's first computer, EDVAC, designed according to the functions of stored programs was designed in the United States in 1946 and developed in 1950.

EDSAC is the first computer in the world to realize the function of storing programs. It was designed by the United Kingdom at telephone number 1947 and put into operation in May.

Development of computer

According to electronic logic devices, the development of electronic computers can be divided into four stages:

In the first generation of computers (from ENIAC to the early 1950s), in the electron tube era, light screen tubes or mercury delay circuits were used as memories, and punched paper tapes or cards were used for input and output. The software is in the primary stage, there is no system software, and the language is only machine language or assembly language. The application is mainly based on scientific calculation.

The second generation computer (from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s) used magnetic cores and drums as memory in the transistor era, resulting in advanced programming languages and batch processing systems. The application field extends to data processing and transaction processing, and is gradually used in industrial control.

The third generation computer (from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s), in the era of small and medium-sized integrated circuits, the main memory began to use semiconductor memory, and the external memory included disks and tapes, an operating system, a standardized programming language and a Basic language for man-machine dialogue. It is not only used in scientific calculation, but also in the fields of enterprise management, automatic control, aided design and aided manufacturing.

The fourth generation computer (from the mid-1970s to the present), in the era of large-scale VLSI, computer applications involve office automation, database management, image recognition, voice recognition, expert system and other fields, and have entered the family.