With the occurrence of World War Two, countries involved in the war is trying to develop computer mengeksploit potential strategic owned computer. This increase funding for the development of computers and computer techniques to accelerate progress. In 1941, Konrad Zuse, a German engineers built a computer, the Z3, for designing aircraft and missile control.
The allies also made progress in the development of computer power. In 1943, the British completed a secret computer code breaker, called Colossus to solve the secret code-used German. Impact of making Colossus is not affecting the development of the computer industry because of two reasons. First, the Colossus computer is not versatile (general-purpose computer), it is only designed to solve the secret code. Second, the existence of this machine is kept confidential until a decade after the war ended.
Business conducted by the United States at the time produce a progress of others. Howard H. Aiken (1900-1973), a Harvard engineer working with IBM, successfully producing electronic calculator for the U.S. Navy. The calculator is half the size of football fields long legs and has a range of 500 miles cable. The Harvd-IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, or Mark I, an electronic computer relai. He uses electromagnetic signals to drive mechanical components. Beropreasi with these machines, slow (it requires 3-5 seconds for each calculation) is not flexible and (the order of calculation can not be changed). The calculator can perform basic calculations aritmatik and equality that is more complex.
The development of computers now is on the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), created by the cooperation between the United States government and the University of Pennsylvania. Consisting of 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistor, and 5 million solder point, the computer is a machine that consume a very large power of 160kW.
This computer was designed by John Presper Eckert (1919-1995) John W. DN Mauchly (1907-1980), ENIAC computer is a versatile (general purpose computer) that work 1000 times faster than Mark I.
In mid-1940's, John von Neumann (1903-1957) joined the team of the University of Pennsylvania in Usha build computer design concept that up to 40 years, still used in computer engineering. Von Neumann designing discrete Electronic Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC) in 1945 with sebuh memory to accommodate both programs or data. This technique allows the computer to stop at a time and then resume work again. A key von Neumann architecture is the central processing unit (CPU), which allows all functions of the computer for coordinated through a single source. 1951, UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I) made by Remington Rand, became the first commercial computer models that take advantage of the Von Neumann architecture.
Both the United States Census Bureau and General Electric have UNIVAC. One of the impressive results achieved by their success in the UNIVAC are predict victory Dwilight D. Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election.
The first generation of computer dikarakteristik with the fact that the operating instructions created specifically for a particular task. Each computer has a program code-binary different called a "language machine" (machine language). This makes it difficult for a computer programmed and the speed limit. Features other computer generation is the first use of the Tube vacuum (which make the computer the size of the very large) DN magnetic cylinder for data storage.
