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The transistor as a digital computer component

Published: 10 December 1951 Publication History

Abstract

Digital computers have been defined as machines that use a language explicitly and one may think of them as carrying on interior dialogues. This concept helps to illustrate one difference between the modern computer and other electronic machinery. The principal function of most electronic apparatus is to take low level signals and raise them to a power level sufficient to drive some device such as a loud speaker, servo motor, relay, or perhaps a cathode-ray tube. In a digital computer, however, there may be a thousand active elements that merely converse with one another. There may be a million alterations of state before an output device has to be energized. These internal operations need not be carried out at any particular power level. It is only necessary for one device to talk loud enough for the next device to recognize what was said. Devices are needed which have stable states that can be changed by very low input signal power. As the computer art advances, one hopes it will move towards the use of devices that listen intently rather than speak loudly. It is in this direction that the transistor can make its earliest contribution to the digital computer field.

References

[1]
Diode Coincidence and Mixing Circuits in Digital Computation, Tung Chang Chen. Proceedings, Institute of Radio Engineers (New York, N. Y.), volume 38, May 1950, pages 511--14.
[2]
SEAC, the National Bureau of Standards Eastern Automatic Computer. National Bureau of Standards Technical News Bulletin (Washington, D. C.), volume 34, September 1950, pages 1--8.

Cited By

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  • (2023)Informationsströme in digitalen KulturenundefinedOnline publication date: 2-Jan-2023
  • (1974)Switching Circuit Technology and Related TimingLogic Design10.1016/B978-0-12-436550-6.50006-5(1-44)Online publication date: 1974
  • (1962)The Evolution of Computing Machines and SystemsProceedings of the IRE10.1109/JRPROC.1962.28800550:5(1039-1058)Online publication date: May-1962
  • Show More Cited By

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
AIEE-IRE '51: Papers and discussions presented at the Dec. 10-12, 1951, joint AIEE-IRE computer conference: Review of electronic digital computers
December 1951
125 pages
ISBN:9781450378512
DOI:10.1145/1434770
  • Conference Chair:
  • J. C. McPherson
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 December 1951

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Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Informationsströme in digitalen KulturenundefinedOnline publication date: 2-Jan-2023
  • (1974)Switching Circuit Technology and Related TimingLogic Design10.1016/B978-0-12-436550-6.50006-5(1-44)Online publication date: 1974
  • (1962)The Evolution of Computing Machines and SystemsProceedings of the IRE10.1109/JRPROC.1962.28800550:5(1039-1058)Online publication date: May-1962
  • (1958)IntroductionProceedings of the May 6-8, 1958, western joint computer conference: contrasts in computers10.1145/1457769.1457776(17-17)Online publication date: 6-May-1958
  • (1954)Transistors and their applicationsTransactions of the IRE Professional Group on Electron Devices10.1109/T-ED.1954.14022ED-1:3(40-77)Online publication date: Aug-1954

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