1, 1st generation computer (1945- 1955): vacuum tube and patch panel.
In the mid-1940s, some people from Harvard University, Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies and University of Pennsylvania built the world's first electronic computer with tens of thousands of vacuum tubes. Open the history of computer development. Machines in this period need a team to design, manufacture, program, operate and maintain each machine. Programming uses machine language, and its basic functions are controlled by hard wiring on the plug-in board.
At this time, it is in the primary stage of computer development, even the programming language has not appeared, and the operating system is unheard of!
2. The second generation computer (1955- 1965): transistor and batch processing system.
During this period, computers have become more and more reliable, and have gone out of research institutes and entered commercial applications. In this period, computers mainly completed all kinds of scientific calculations, which needed special operators to maintain and to write programs for each calculation task.
The second generation computers are mainly used for scientific and engineering calculations. Write programs in FORTRAN and assembly language. In the later period, the rudiments of operating systems appeared: FMS(FORTRAN Monitoring System) and IBMSYS(IBM operating system for 7094).
3. The third generation computer (1965- 1980): integrated circuit chip and multiprogram.
In the early 1960s, computer manufacturers were divided into two computer series according to different applications, one for scientific computing and the other for commercial applications.
With the deepening of computer application, there is a demand for computer to unify two applications. At this time, IBM tried to solve this problem by launching System/360.
With this plan, IBM organized the development of OS/360 operating system, and then the complicated demand and the low level of software engineering at that time made the development of OS/360 fall into the most terrible "software development quagmire" in history, and the most famous failed work-Mystery Man Month was born.
Although this development plan failed, this wish has become the goal of computer manufacturers.
At this time, MIT, Bell Laboratories and General Electric Company decided to develop a "public computer service system"-Multics, hoping that it can support hundreds of time-sharing users at the same time. As a result, the development difficulty of this plan exceeded everyone's expectation, and finally the system ended in failure. However, the idea of MULTICS has many inspirations for later operating systems.
In the late 1960s, Ken Thompson, a computer scientist who participated in the development of MULTICS in Bell Laboratories, developed a simplified single-user version of MULTICS on an unmanned PDP-7 machine. Later led to the birth of UNIX operating system.
UNIX operating system dominates minicomputers, workstations and other markets. It is also one of the most influential operating systems so far, and Linux is also a derivative of UNIX system. Next time, we will introduce the development history of UNIX.
4. The fourth generation computer (1980- present): personal computer.
With the continuous updating and development of computer technology, computers have magically entered people's lives, and computers with strong computing power can be obtained at low prices.
When the price is no longer the threshold to block the popularization of computers, it is very important to reduce the ease of use of computers! Because of the characteristics of UNIX system, it is not suitable for running on personal computers, so it needs a new operating system.
At this critical moment in history, because IBM underestimated the PC market, it did not use its greatest strength to compete for this market. At this time, Intel took the opportunity to enter and become the boss of today's microprocessors. At the same time, Bill Gates, the president of Microsoft who is good at seizing the opportunity, entered this field in time, transformed himself into MS-DOS with the CP/M he bought, and became the overlord in the field of personal computer operating system with it.
Although Apple took the lead in GUI, it failed to expand its success because of its incompatibility and closed market strategy. At this time, Microsoft entered the GUI in time and took the lead again with WINDOWS system!