The concept of the stored program, on which the architecture of modern computers is based, is credited to whom?
- A.Charles Babbage
- B.Ada Lovelace
- C.John von Neumann
- D.Herman Hollerith
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is C, John von Neumann. He set out the idea that a computer should keep its instructions in the same memory as its data, so that a program could be loaded and changed like any other information instead of being wired into the machine. The design built on that idea is called the von Neumann architecture and is still the pattern of ordinary computers.
Option A, Charles Babbage, designed the Analytical Engine with a store and a mill and is the Father of the Computer, but his instructions came from punched cards rather than from memory. Option B, Ada Lovelace, wrote the first algorithm intended for a machine and is called the first programmer. Option D, Herman Hollerith, built the punched-card tabulating machine for the American census and founded the company that grew into IBM. The examinable phrase is stored program, and it belongs to von Neumann alone.
Read the full article: Basics of Computers and Generations: Parts, Memory and MCQs
Practice Questions
View allWho is known as the Father of the Computer?
- A.Blaise Pascal
- B.Charles Babbage
- C.Alan Turing
- D.Herman Hollerith
Show answer
He designed the Difference Engine and then the Analytical Engine, and the Analytical Engine contained the logical parts of a modern computer: a store for holding numbers, a mill for calculating, punched-card input and a printed output.
Read the full explanation →Vacuum tubes were used as the main electronic component in which generation of computers?
- A.First generation
- B.Second generation
- C.Third generation
- D.Fourth generation
Show answer
Machines such as ENIAC, EDVAC and UNIVAC-I ran on thousands of vacuum tubes, which made them enormous, power-hungry and dependent on constant cooling.
Read the full explanation →The transistor, which defined second-generation computers, was invented at which laboratory?
- A.Texas Instruments
- B.Intel Corporation
- C.Bell Laboratories
- D.IBM Research
Show answer
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley demonstrated the transistor there in 1947, and the three shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for it.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is regarded as the first commercially available electronic computer?
- A.ENIAC
- B.EDVAC
- C.Harvard Mark I
- D.UNIVAC-I
Show answer
It was the first electronic computer built to be sold to customers rather than used only in a laboratory, and it was famously put to work on census and business data processing.
Read the full explanation →In which year was the Intel 4004, the first commercial microprocessor, introduced?
- A.1964
- B.1971
- C.1975
- D.1981
Show answer
The Intel 4004 placed an entire processing unit on a single chip for the first time in a commercial product, and that step marks the beginning of the fourth generation of computers, built on very large scale integration.
Read the full explanation →