SEAC

The term SEAC can stand for:

SEAC (computer)

SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer or Standards Electronic 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 (the DYSEAC). The team that developed SEAC was organized by Samuel N. Alexander. 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.

Description

Based on EDVAC, SEAC used only 747 vacuum tubes (a small number for the time) eventually expanded to 1500 tubes. It had 10,500 germanium diodes which performed all of the logic functions (see the article diode–transistor logic for the working principles of diode logic). They were expanded to 16,000. It was the first computer to do most of its logic with solid-state devices. The tubes were used for amplification, inversion and storing information in dynamic flip-flops. The machine used 64 acoustic delay lines to store 512 words of memory, with each word being 45 bits in size. The clock rate was kept low (1 MHz).