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. A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. Year 1950 ( MCML) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the 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. The von Neumann architecture is a design model for a stored-program Digital computer that uses a processing unit and a single separate storage structure
Description
Based on EDVAC, SEAC used only 747 vacuum tubes (a small number for the time) eventually expanded to 1500 tubes but 10,500 germanium diodes also expanded to 16,000. EDVAC ( E lectronic D iscrete V ariable A utomatic C omputer) was one of the earliest electronic Computers This article is about the electronic device not an evacuated pipe used for experiments in Free-fall. Germanium (dʒɚˈmeɪniəm is a Chemical element with the symbol Ge and Atomic number 32 Dioden2jpg|thumb|right|150px|Figure 2 Various semiconductor diodes It also used no transistors, since 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 and/or inversion. The machine used 64 acoustic delay lines to store 512 words of memory, with each word being 45 bits in size. Genesis in radar The basic concept of the delay line originated with World War II Radar research as a system to reduce clutter from reflections from the ground Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to Computer components devices and recording media that retain digital A bit is a binary digit, taking a value of either 0 or 1 Binary digits are a basic unit of Information storage and communication The clock rate was kept low (1 MHz). 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 The hertz (symbol Hz) is a measure of Frequency, informally defined as the number of events occurring per Second.
The computer's instruction set consisted of only eleven types of instructions: fixed-point addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; comparison, and input & output eventually expanded to 16. In Computing, a fixed-point number representation is a Real data type for a number that has a fixed number of digits after (and sometimes also before the The addition time was 864 microseconds and the multiplication time was 2980 microseconds (i. The second ( SI symbol s) sometimes abbreviated sec, is the name of a unit of Time, and is the International System of Units e. close to 3 milliseconds).
Applications
On some occasions SEAC was used by a remote teletype. A teleprinter ( 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:
- meteorology
- linear programming
- optical lenses
- a program for Los Alamos National Laboratory
- tables for Loran navigation
- statistical sampling plans
- wave function of the helium atom
- designing a proton synchrotron
See also
- SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer)
References
- Williams, Michael R. Meteorology (from Greek grc μετέωρος metéōros, "high in the sky" and grc -λογία -logia) is the Interdisciplinary In Mathematics, linear programming (LP is a technique for optimization of a Linear Objective function, subject to Linear equality Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a LORAN ( LO ng R ange A id to N avigation is a terrestrial Radio navigation system using Low frequency Radio transmitters Helium ( He) is a colorless odorless tasteless non-toxic Inert Monatomic Chemical The proton ( Greek πρῶτον / proton "first" is a Subatomic particle with an Electric charge of one positive 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 SWAC ( Standards Western Automatic Computer) was an early electronic digital Computer built in 1950 by the U (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. )
Astin,A. V. (1955), "Computer Development (SEAC and DYSEAC) at the National Bureau of Standards, Washington D. C. , National Bureau of Standards Circular 551, U. S. Government Printing Office, January 25, 1955
External links
- SEAC and the Start of Image Processing at the National Bureau of Standards – At the NIST virtual museum
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