Second Generation (1954-1962)

                 The second generation witnessed several important developments at all levels of computer system design, ranging from the technology used to build the basic circuits to the programming languages used to write scientific applications. Electronic switches in this era were based on discrete diode and transistor technology with a switching time of approximately 0.3 microseconds. 

           The first machines to be built with this technology include TRADIC at Bell Laboratories in 1954 and TX-0 at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory. Index registers were designed for controlling loops and floating point units for calculations based on real numbers.

               A number of high level programming languages were introduced and these include FORTRAN (1956), ALGOL (1958), and COBOL (1959). Important commercial machines of this era include the IBM 704 and its successors, the 709 and 7094. In the 1950s the first two supercomputers were designed specifically for numeric processing in scientific applications.

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