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{{Main|History of computing hardware}}The history of computing hardware is often used to reference the different generations of computing devices:
*First generation computers (1940-1955): It used [[vacuum tube]]s such as the [[List of vacuum tubes#6 volt heater.2Ffilament tubes|6J6]]<ref>{{cite book|last1=Dyson|first1=George|title=Turing's Cathedral - The origins of the Digital Universe|url=https://archive.org/details/turingscathedral0000dyso|url-access=registration|date=2012|publisher=Pantheon Books|___location=New York|isbn=978-0-375-42277-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/turingscathedral0000dyso/page/124 124]|chapter=7}}</ref> or specially designed tubes - or even mechanical arrangements, and were relatively slow, energy-hungry and the [[First generation computer|earliest computer]]s were less flexible in their programmability.
*Second generation computers (1956-1963): It
*Third generation computers (1964-1970): It used [[Integrated Circuits|Integrated Circuits (ICs)]], the main difference between hardware in computers of the 1960s and today being the density of transistors in each IC (beginning with [[Small Scale Integration]] chips like the [[Transistor-transistor logic]] (TTL) [[7400 series|SN7400]] [[logic gates|gates]] with 20 transistors, through [[Medium Scale Integration]] and [[Large Scale Integration]] to [[Very-large-scale integration|Very-large-scale integration (VLSI)]] with over ten billion transistors in a single silicon-based IC "chip".
*Fourth generation computers(1971–present): It uses [[Microprocessor]]s, as millions of ICs were built onto a single silicon-based chip. Since then form factor of computers reduced, task processing & graphic rendering improved and it became more battery-powered with the advent of personal mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, smartphones etc.
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