Characteristics:
- These machines were enormous, filling up entire rooms with tens of thousands of vacuum tubes but were much slower than even the cheapest PC available today.
- They relied on machine language to perform calculations; they could only solve one problem at a time.
- Input was punched on punch cards or paper tapes and output was produced through printers.
- Speed was measured in milliseconds (10-3 s)
Advantages:
- Vacuum tubes were the only electronic components avaliable during those days.
- Vacuum tube technology made possible the advent of electronic digital computers.
Disadvantages:
- Too bulky in size and not portable.
- Unreliable and thousands of vacuum tubes that were used emitted large amount of heat and burnt frequently.
- Prone to frequent hardware failures and constant maintainance were required.
- Manual assembly of individual components into a functional unit was required.
- Commercial production of such computers was not possible.
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