The U.S. Department of Defense uses it for ballistic calculations. It is a giant, with 18000 electron tubes, an area of 170 square meters, weighing 30 tons, consuming about 150 kilowatts of electricity, and performing 5000 operations per second, which is insignificant now, but unprecedented at that time. ?
ENIAC uses electron tubes as components, so it is also called electron tube computer, which is the first generation computer. Electron tube computers are bulky, consume high power, are prone to heat, and cannot work for long.
resource development
The world's first electronic computer was a colossus: it weighed more than 30 tons, with an area of about 170 square meters and 18000 electron tubes in its abdomen. It was born in the University of Pennsylvania on February 1946.
In World War II, both opposing sides bombed each other's military targets with planes and artillery. If you want to hit accurately, you must calculate accurately and draw a "shooting map". Only by looking up the table to determine the muzzle angle can the fired shells hit the flying target.
However, each number has to be calculated four times and thousands of times, and it takes more than a dozen people several months to complete a "chart" with a mechanical computer operated by hand.
In view of this situation, people began to study using electron tubes as "electronic switches" to improve the operation speed of computers. Many scientists took part in experiments and research, and finally made the world's first electronic computer, named "Eniac".
In the mid-1940s, the Department of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania, under the leadership of Molic and eckert, developed an electronic digital integrator and calculator (ENIAC for short) for the Aberdeen Ballistic Research Laboratory of the Army Ordnance Department.
This computer named "Eniac" covers an area of 150 square meters and has a total weight of 30 tons. It uses 18000 lamps, 6000 switches, 7000 resistors, 10000 capacitors, 500000 wires, and consumes 140 kW, which can be added for 5000 times. This behemoth appeared in the United States on February 1946.
The appearance of this computer marks the beginning of the computer age.
The predecessor of the computer is something called "adder", which was invented by the French mathematician "Blaise Pascal" and gradually improved ... a "difference extension" that can do four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Extended data:
ENIAC is a modular computer, which consists of independent panels that perform different functions. Twenty modules are accumulators, which can not only add and subtract, but also store ten decimal numbers.
When numbers are called, they are passed between these units through some general buses. In order to achieve high speed, the panel needs to send and receive numbers, calculate, store results and trigger the next operation independently. This series of operations does not require any moving parts. The key to its universality lies in its "branching" ability-it can trigger different operations according to the sign of the calculation result.
Besides speed, the most striking thing about ENIAC is its scale and complexity. ENIAC includes 17468 electron tubes, 7200 crystal diodes, 1500 relays, 10000 capacitors and about 5 million manual welding heads.
It weighs 27 tons (30 American tons), has a volume of about 2.4m× 6m× 30.48m (8× 3x100ft), covers an area of167m2 (1800ft), weighs 30 British tons and consumes electricity100ft.
IBM's card reader is used for input and punch is used for output. Using an IBM accounting machine (such as IBM 405), these cards can be used to generate output offline.
References:
Baidu encyclopedia-the first generation of electronic computers