Question

Technology has evolved through several phases’ right from the first generation of
computers till date. We saw the vacuum tubes, Transistors, Integrated circuits,
Microprocessors and now we are in the generation of Artificial intelligence. Explain
how each of these changed the face of technology and how it has transformed the
environment and the world in general.

Answer 1

The technology evolves through many phases from first generation of computer till date as many changes came up in technology because of new inventions.

The first generation of computer (1940-1956)

• These computers used the vacuum tubes and magnetic drums for memory as circuitry these computers were very large in size taking almost one space of room and they produces a lot of heat which causes breakdown these computers used a basic programming language called machine language.
• These Computer can solve only one problem at a time and inputs device used were punched cards and output was in form of print out. Example of first generation computer include UNIVAC, ENIAC etc so the face of technology was not fully developed in this generation

Second generation Computer(1956-1963)

• The second generation computer replaced the vacuum tubes with transistor as these is one of the best improvement over vacuum tubes as transistors makes compute more cheaper, smaller in size and faster consumes less power so technology becomes advanced than previous generation.
• some high level programming languages were developed like COBOL, FORTRAN.The primary memory stored on magnetic tape and secondary memory uses magnetic disk. Example of second generation computer are IBM1620 ,CDC3600

Third generation computer (1964-1971)

• The third generation Computers are completely different from first and second generation computer as these computers used the IC integrated circuits .Integrated circuits consists of thousands of transistors and other circuitry elements
• so It becomes possible that single IC chip can contains thousand of circuits in small region So the size of computer become smaller and consumes less power so this generation made a big change in technology.

Fourth generation of computer (1972-2010)

• The fourth generation computer used VLSI (very large integrated circuits) technology so they were also known as microprocessor and Intel was first company who developed the first microprocessor. these VLSI circuits contains about 5000 transistors on a very small chip .
• These computers were capable to perform some computations and more tasks and these computer becomes very compact and consumes less electricity to run.These computer understand high level language like C, C++,Java etc.

Fifth generation of computer (2010 till now)

• This generation is most advanced generation which is the present generation of computer these computers understand high level languages like python, C#,R these computers can perform scientific calculations as well as uses artificial intelligence which focus on developing an intelligent machine which thinks like humans for example recognizing the speech and problem solving .

The technology goes a major change from first generation computer to fifth generation computers as now computer can do work more quickly and efficiently because of advancements as they have large amount of memory and data. The computer size also becomes very small and people can socially interact with others on the internet so technology changed the whole world and environment.