Second generation of Computer
A big revolution in electronics took place with the invention of transistors by Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley in 1947. Transistors made of germanium semiconductor material were highly reliable compared to tubes since transistors had no filament to burn. They occupied less space and used only a tenth of the power required by tubes. They also could switch from a 0 to a I state in a few microseconds, about a tenth of the time needed by tubes. Thus, switching circuits for computers made with transistors were about ten times more reliable, ten times faster, dissipated one tenth the power, occupied about one tenth the space and were ten times cheaper than those using tubes. Computer manufacturers thus change over to transistors from tubes. The second generation computers emerged around 1955 with the use of transistors instead of vacuum tubes in computers. This generation lasted till 1965.
Another major event during this period was the invention of magnetic cores for storage. Magnetic cores are tiny rings (0.05 cm diameter) made of ferrite and can be magnetized in either clockwise or anticlockwise direction. The two directions are used to represent a 0 and a l. Magnetic cores were used to construct large random access memories. Memory capacity in the second generation was about 100 KB. Magnetic disk storage was also developed during this period.
The higher reliability of computers and large memory availability led to the development of high level languages. FORTRAN, COBOL, Algol and SNOBOL were during this generation. With higher speed CPUs and the advent of magnetic tape and disk storage operating systems were developed. Good batch operating system, particularly the ones on IBM 7000 series computers emerged during the second generation .
Commercial applications rapidly developed during this period use by mid-1960s. More than of installed computers were used and in business dominate All systems were batch oriented. Payroll, inventory control, marketing, production such as Linear Programming, Critical Path Methods (CPM) and Simulation Engineering applications, particularly in process control, increased rapidly.
New professions in computing such as systems analysts and programmers emerged du the second generation. Academic programs in computer science were also initiated.