On August 1, 1958, China’s first small electronic tube digital computer, the 103 machine, was born. This machine had a word length of 32 bits and an operating speed of 30 operations per second, using a magnetic drum internal memory with a capacity of 1KB.
First Small Electronic Tube Digital Computer103 Machine
In September 1959, China’s first large electronic tube computer, the 104 machine, was successfully developed. This machine had an operating speed of 10,000 operations per second, a word length of 39 bits, used core memory with a capacity of 2-4KB, and was equipped with magnetic drum external storage, an optical paper tape input machine, and a 1/2 inch tape drive.
In June 1965, China’s first large transistor computer, the 109B machine, designed independently, was born at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It had a word length of 32 bits, an operating speed of 100,000 operations per second, and a memory capacity of 24 KB.
First Large Transistor Computer109B Machine
In May 1981, the national standard for the “Character Set for Information Exchange in Chinese (GB/T 2312—1980)” was officially issued. This was China’s first information technology standard for Chinese characters.
In July 1981, the prototype of the Chinese character laser typesetting system, designed overall by Peking University, passed the appraisal. The laser typesetting system achieved international advanced levels in laser output precision and certain software functionalities at that time.
In December 1983, the National University of Defense Technology successfully developed China’s first billion-level supercomputer, “Galaxy-1”, with an operating speed of 100 million operations per second. The successful development of the Galaxy machine marked a new height in China’s computer research level.
Galaxy-1
In July 1989, Kingsoft’s WPS software was launched, filling the gap in China’s computer word processing software and achieving widespread application.
In April 1994, the education and research demonstration network in the Zhongguancun area completed full-function IP connectivity with the Internet, marking China’s official recognition as a country connected to the Internet internationally.
In September 2002, the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences announced the successful development of China’s first mass-producible general-purpose CPU, the “Loongson 1” chip. This chip’s logical design and layout design have complete independent intellectual property rights, breaking the history of China having no “core”.
Loongson1
In December 2003, the “ShenTeng 6800” supercomputer, undertaken by Lenovo as the national grid main node, was officially developed, achieving an actual operating speed of 41.83 trillion operations per second, ranking 14th in the world with an efficiency of 78.5%.
Note: This content is excerpted from the “Fundamentals of Computer Applications (5th Edition)” published by Science Press, edited by Nie Yufeng, Deng Juan, and Zhou Bing. Please contact for removal if there are copyright issues.