PC-1: The 1954 Computer with no Tubes, Relays, or Transistors

In nineteen fifty-four, Japanese engineer Eiichi Goto invented the parametron — a computer switch with no tubes, relays, or transistors. As Hackaday reports, it used the phase of an AC waveform to store binary data, allowing ferrite cores and capacitors to do the work of complex electronics. The first parametron computer, the PC-1, ran at fifteen kilohertz and performed addition in two hundred seventy microseconds. Japanese manufacturers embraced the technology, building machines like the FACOM series with thousands of parametrons each. They were cheap, reliable, and could drive dozens of downstream circuits. But speed ultimately mattered more than cost: faster transistor-based computers overtook the market by the nineteen sixties, relegating parametron machines to obscurity.

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