Computer Technology: Evolving Science

Room-sized Computer.

The UNIVAC of 1950 was far different from microcomputers. It was fourteen-by-seven-by-nine feet, the size of a small bedroom. A set of five thousand vacuum tubes made it work. It worked on a decimal (ten-digit) system rather than a binary (two-digit) system. The internal memory was one thousand words, which was the memory unit and each word consisted of twelve digits or letters (although it could process multiple magnetic tapes simultaneously with millions of bits of information on them). Software, a term that means stored programs, existed only in a primitive form, but it hardly resembled the software that was common-place by the end of the decade as internal memory systems in computers improved.

Innovations.

Major changes were made in the computer between 1950 and 1959. The transistor revolutionized the industry by replacing vacuum tubes in the computer's processing unit. Transistors also made...

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