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The First Computer Generation

It took a long time after Babbage's analytical engine before new attempts to build a computer were made (Vorndran 74). Giant machines were built in the 1930s and 1940s, mainly for military purposes (Ebeling 76). However, since relays were used for these early machines, they are not regarded as machines of the first computer generation (Vorndran 86).
The 1st computer generation began with the use of vacuum tubes  in 1945 and ended with the use of transistors  in 1955 (Tanenbaum 5).⁷ Apart from vacuum tubes, the first computer generation was characterised by the use of plugboards  and the direct operation from a console with front panel switches and lights in order to interact with the machine (Silberschatz and Galvin 789; Tanenbaum 5-6). Programming was mostly done in machine language, and it was regarded as an art:

[...] many programmers of the freewheeling 1950s began to regard themselves as members of a priesthood guarding skills and mysteries far too complex for ordinary mortals. (Backus 127; see also Negroponte 112-113)

There were no general programming principles; programmers often wrote their code from scratch, except for a few subroutines (Backus 126). The first "high-level" programming language which was used on a computer was SHORT CODE; however, it was "hand-compiled" (Bauknecht 158; Knuth 213).⁸
Typically, the builders of early machines were also their programmers and their operators (Klaeren 15; Zuse 56). Famous machines of the time were the ENIAC  and the MARK III and MARK IV   (Tanenbaum 5; Vorndran 89-95)

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