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Sunday, December 19, 2010

EDVAC & UNIVAC

EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automated Computer)
          In 1945, a noticeable improvement in the development of the computer took place when John Von Neumann, the Hungarian mathematician genius developed the idea of Stored Program Concept. He proposed a new computer called EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automated Computer) which would utilize his stored program concept.
The stored program concept would overcome the drawbacks of ENIAC. People would not have to rewire the machine to go to a different program, the machine itself would read the instruction from the Computer’s storage to switch or change to a new program. According to Newman, EDVAC would use Binary Number system instead of Decimal Number System used in ENIAC.
Prof. Maurie Wilkes used the similar program concept to design the computer called EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer). EDSAC was developed completely in 1949.


UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer)
          After developing ENIAC, Mauchly and Eckert formed their own company in 1946. This company built a new computer called UNIVAC-I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer-I) in 1951. UNIVAC was delivered to the Census Bureau. Business organizations too started using UNIVAC. Hence, it was the first commercially used electronic computer in the world.
IBM company paid much attention to the development trends of the computers and it could grasp the opportunity of the need of computer in the world. It started manufacturing series computers. The IBM 650 series computer started its service in Boston in 1954. Other companies also emerged during this time.

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