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SEAC (Standards Electronic/Eastern Automatic Computer) was a first-generation electronic computer, built in 1950 by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (NBS) and was initially called the National Bureau of Standards Interim Computer, because it was a small-scale computer designed to be built quickly and put into operation while the NBS waited for more powerful computers to be completed. SEAC was demonstrated in April 1950, and in May 1950 it went into full production, making it the first fully functional stored-program electronic computer in the US. A computer is a device or machine for processing information from data according to a program — a compiled list of instruction. ...
1950 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...
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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (or NIST) formerly known as The National Bureau of Standards is a non regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce’s Technology Administration. ...
The term von Neumann architecture refers to a computer design model that uses a single storage structure to hold both instructions and data. ...
Description Based on EDVAC, SEAC used only 747 vacuum tubes (a small number for the time) but 15,800 germanium diodes. It also used some transistors, and was the first computer tro do so. All of the logic was done with diodes, making it the first computer to do all of its logic with solid-state devices. The tubes were used only for amplification. The machine used 64 acoustic delay lines to store 512 words of memory, with each word being 45 bits in size. The clock rate was kept low (1 MHz). EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the earliest electronic computers. ...
In electronics, a vacuum tube (American English) or (thermionic) valve (British English) is a device generally used to amplify a signal. ...
General Name, Symbol, Number germanium, Ge, 32 Chemical series metalloids Group, Period, Block 14, 4, p Appearance grayish white Atomic mass 72. ...
Types of diodes A diode can be thought of as the electronic version of a one-way valve. ...
Delay line memory was a form of computer memory used on some of the earliest digital computers, such as the EDSAC and UNIVAC I. The first such systems consisted of a column of mercury with piezo crystal transducers (a combination of speaker and microphone) at either end. ...
This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
This article is about the unit of information. ...
The clock rate is the fundamental rate in cycles per second, measured in hertz, at which a [[computer]] performs its most basic operations such as adding two numbers or transferring a value from one processor register to another. ...
A megahertz (MHz) is one million (106) hertz, a measure of frequency. ...
The computer's instruction set consisted of only seven types of instructions: fixed-point addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; comparison, and input & output. The addition time was 864 microseconds and the multiplication time was 2980 microseconds (i.e. close to 3 milliseconds). In computing, a fixed-point number representation is a real data type for a number that has a fixed number of digits after the decimal (or binary or hexadecimal) point. ...
A microsecond is an SI unit of time equal to one millionth (10-6) of a second. ...
Applications On some occasions SEAC was used by a remote teletype. This makes it one of the first computers to be used remotely. With many modifications, it was used until 1964. Some of the problems run on it dealt with: A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is a now largely obsolete electro-mechanical typewriter which can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point through a simple electrical communications channel, often just a pair of wires. ...
Satellite image of Hurricane Hugo Meteorology is the scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting. ...
In mathematics, linear programming (LP) problems are optimization problems in which the objective function and the constraints are all linear. ...
Los Alamos National Laboratory, aerial view from 1995. ...
LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation) is a terrestrial navigation system using low frequency radio transmitters that use the time interval between radio signals received from two or more stations to determine the position of a ship or aircraft. ...
General Name, Symbol, Number helium, He, 2 Chemical series noble gases Group, Period, Block 18, 1, s Appearance colorless Atomic mass 4. ...
Properties In physics, the proton (Greek proton = first) is a subatomic particle with an electric charge of one positive fundamental unit (1. ...
A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator in which the magnetic field (to turn the particles so they circulate) and the electric field (to accelerate the particles) are carefully synchronized with the travelling particle beam. ...
See also - SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer)
The SWAC (from Standards Western Automatic Computer) was a first-generation electronic computer, built in 1950 by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (NBS). ...
References - Williams, Michael R. (1997). A History of Computing Technology. IEEE Computer Society.
- Metropolis, N; Howlett, J.; Rota, Gian-Carlo (editors) (1980). A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century. Academic Press. (The chapter "Memories of the Bureau of Standards' SEAC", by Ralph J. Slutz.)
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