· The Second Generation (1959-1963).

1. Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic element.
• AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in the 1940s
• Crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor
2. Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.
3. Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology.
• High-level programming languages

E.g., FORTRAN and COBOL