INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS
COMPUTER GENERATIONS AND CLASSIFICATION
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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Big and cheap
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slow and expensive
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slow and small
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None of the above
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Detailed explanation-1: -The first generation computers were huge, slow, expensive and often undependable. In 1946, two Americans, Prosper Eckert and John Mauchly built the ENIAC electronic computer which used very large and heavy electronic vacuum tubes, which took up a lot of space and gave off a great deal of heat like the light bulbs.
Detailed explanation-2: -The main characteristics of first generation of computers (1940s-1950s) Power – consume a lot of electricity and generate a lot of heat. Speed and size – very slow and very large in size (often taking up entire room).
Detailed explanation-3: -These tubes, like electric bulbs, produced a lot of heat and the installations used to fuse frequently. Therefore, they were very expensive and only large organizations were able to afford it. In this generation, mainly batch processing operating system was used.
Detailed explanation-4: -They were slow due to their use of inefficient vacuum tube technology. First generation computers were heavy, weighing around 30 tons, and large in size. Their limited storage capacity, due to magnetic drums, could only hold a small amount of information.