SECOND GENERATION COMPUTER (1950-1964)

By 1948, the invention of the transistor greatly changed the computer's development.  The transistor replaced the large, cumbersome vacuum tube in televisions, radios and computers.  As a result, the size of electronic machinery has been shrinking ever since.  The transistor was at work in the computer by 1956.  Coupled with early advances in magnetic-core memory, transistors led to second generation computers that were smaller, faster, more reliable and more energy-efficient than their predecessors.  The first large-scale machines to take advantage of this transistor technology were early supercomputers, Stretch by IBM and LARC by Sperry-Rand.  These computers, both developed for atomic energy laboratories, could handle an enormous amount of data, a capability much in demand by atomic scientists.  The machines were costly, however, and tended to be too powerful for the business sector's computing needs, thereby limiting their attractiveness.

Throughout the early 1960's, there were a number of commercially successful second generation computers used in businesses, universities, and government from companies such as Burroughs, Control Data, Honeywell, IBM, Sperry-Rand, and others.  These second generation computers were also of solid state design, and contained transistors in place of vacuum tubes.  They also contained all the components we associate with the modern day computer: printers, tape storage, disk storage, memory, and stored programs.