Third Generation of Computers
Computers begin to shrink, and become reliable, and efficient.
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Corporation separately discovered the benefits of integrated circuits in 1958 and 1959, respectively. Kilby built his IC onto germanium whereas Noyce built one onto a silicon chip. The first systems to use the IC was the IBM 360, which was packed with the muscle to handle both commercial and scientific assignments.
The integrated circuit, sometimes called a ASIC, IC, or just a chip, is a series of
transistors placed on a small, flat piece that is usually made of silicon.
The chips were first used in calculators for the Air Force computers in 1962.
In 1964, the IBM System/360 was announced by International Business Machines Corporations. It contained custom hybrid integrated circuits, worked with 32-bit words, and used 360 assembly language. It was this computer that processed data concerning lunar landings at NASA. Its mainframe could run programs of earlier systems, making it more useful and valuable. It and its succeeding models were ultimately a huge impact on the computer world in terms of workload and power.
In this generation remote processing, time-sharing, multiprogramming operating system were used. High-level languages (FORTRAN-II TO IV, COBOL, PASCAL PL/1, BASIC, ALGOL-68 etc.) were used during this generation.
The main features of third generation are −