Computer Knowledge - Exam Oriented
1. First electronic computer
The first electronic computer was the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). It was produced in 1946 in the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. It took three years to build. It contained around 19,000 valves, weighed 30 tonnes and consumed 200 kilowatts of electricity. It was extremely fast by the standards of the day. It could multiply two 10 digit decimal numbers in 3 milliseconds. A large team vas responsible for the design and construction of ENIAC, most notably J.P. Eckert and J.W. Mauchly.
This machine had the problem of huge effort of programming which discouraged it use for any other than extensive Computational problems. This computer did not have memors unit and did not use stored program concept. The programming had to be done manually by plugging and unplugging sets of Connecting wires. Data could be entered using a punched card reader, and results output on punched cards or on an electric type writer.
John von Neumann, a member of Moore School at University of Pennsylvania (responsible for introduction of first electronic computer ENIAC in 1946), is credited with the idea of a stored-program machine in which program and data share a common memory. As a result of this, computer operates automatically in the sequence of instructions defined by stored program.
