completed in 1946. It was typical of first generation computers, it weighed 30 tonnes contained 18,000 electronic valves and consumed around 25KW of electrical power. It was, however, capable of an amazing100,000 calculations a second. The next major step in the history of computing was the invention of the transistor in 1947.This replaced the inefficient valves with a much smaller and more reliable component. Transistorised computers are normally referred to as 'Second Generation' and dominated the late 1950s …showed first 75 words of 274 total…

…showed last 75 words of 274 total…computers processing abilities on a single (small) chip. Coupled with another of Intel's inventions - the RAM chip (Kilobits of memory on a single chip) - the microprocessor allowed fourth generation computers to be even smaller and faster than ever before. The 4004 was capable of 60,000 instructions per second, but later processors (such as the 8086 that all of Intel's processors for the IBM PC and compatibles is based) brought ever increasing speed and ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography** vioa