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The first-generation computers were very large, expensive, and requiered huge amounts of electicity. A vacuum tube consists of a glass bulb and wire. The wire is use to carry data in the form of electronic signals. The ENIAC was a frist-generation computer.
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The second-generation computers used transistors instead of vacuum tubes.
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Integrated circuitis made computers faster, cheaper, and smaller than the second-generation computers. An integrated circuit (IC) is as small as a transistor but it can work as fast as thousands of them
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The fourth-generation computers are smaller, portable and cheaper. They use less electricity and produce less heat. The fourth-generation computers use microprocessors. A microprocessors consists of a small silicon chip on which thousands of circuits are placed
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The fifth-generation computers are the most advanced computers. Scientists are now trying to develop fifth-generation computers in a way that they can think on their own. This is called artificial inteligence (AI). Robots work on this technology. Supercomputers are the most complex computers. They are used by people who need to process complex and large amounts of data