Computers computers that have been appearing since the 1940s have been grouped in 5 generations, which differ in their components. However the real computing Revolution did not until the appearance of microprocessors. First generation 1940-1960 Harvard University establishes an agreement with Enterprise IBM to create a computer of a general nature. This machine was operational in 1944 and had the ability to store 72 numbers of 23 figures, used punched cards to enter numbers and operations. His speed was not very high, requiring ten seconds to perform a multiplication and eleven for a division E.
N. i. a. C. first completely electronic computer built. This machine occupied around a basement at the University, weighed 30 tons and required an entire air conditioning system, but was able to make five thousand arithmetical operations in one second. John von Neumann; his ideas were so fundamental that it is considered the father of computers. The fundamental idea of Neumann was let live side by that memory side data with instructions, so that the computer could be programmed via these data and do not wire that electrically programmed computer operations.
In this generation include the appearance of the first programming languages that allowed substitute programming in machine language, i.e. 1 and 0, which were entered directly into the computer, by a symbolic programming, translating symbols of natural language to machine language. Second generation 1960-1965 is characterized by the change of the vacuum valve by transistors and an increase in memory capacity. Circuits with transistors, reduce the size of the machines. The transistor is an electronic device consisting of a crystal of Silicon. Its operation is simple, has two possibilities, transmit or not transmit. His appearance was that computers were faster than small and cheap. In this generation the auxiliary memory is expanded and created the large capacity magnetic disks. Printers and scanners were designed and developed programming languages, appear the new programming language called high level languages.