The Computer Generations

First Generation 1951 to 1959 First generation computers were powered by vacuum tubes; they were extremely large machines, occupying huge rooms and consuming vast amounts of energy. Second Generation 1959 to 1965 Second generation computer systems took advantage of semiconductor technology which meant that transistors replaced the vacuum tubes. This resulted in reduced physical size, faster computing and greater power. The transistor was initially developed by Bell Laboratories, a large US corporation. Third Generation 1965 to 1971 Third generation computers were made from integrated circuits, again reducing size, faster computing and greater power. Integrated circuits at this time consisted of a piece of silicon about 10mm square on which up to one thousand transistors could be placed. Magnectic discs were improved, greatly increasing storage capacity. Input/Output devices such as monitors and keyboards were introduced and the operating system was first adopted. A new concept was also developed ; "families" of computers, which allowed for upgrading and expansion.

Forth Generation 1971 to Present From integrated circuits to large scale integration to very large scale integration; this was the start of the microprocessor age. The microprocessor used continued to improve from the 8086, 80286 to the 80486, then Pentium, Pentium 2, and now Pentium 3. The Fifth Generation The Future The "fifth generation" of computers were defined by the Japanese government in 1980 when they unveiled an optimistic ten-year plan to produce the next generation of computers. This was an interesting plan for two reasons. Firstly, it is not at all really clear what the fourth generation is, or even whether the third generation had finished yet. Secondly, it was an attempt to define a generation of computers before they had come into existence. The main requirements of the 5G machines was that they incorporate the features of Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, and Natural Language. The goal was to produce machines that are capable of performing tasks in similar ways to humans, are capable of learning, and are capable of interacting with humans in natural language and preferably using both speech input (speech recognition) and speech output (speech synthesis). Such goals are obviously of interest to linguists and speech scientists as natural language and speech processing are key components of the definition. As you may have guessed, this goal has not yet been fully realised, although significant progress has been made towards various aspects of these goals.