A transistor computer is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The "first generation" of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, were bulky, and were unreliable. A "second generation" of computers, through the late 1950s and 1960s featured boards filled with individual transistors and magnetic memory cores. These machines remained the mainstream design into the late 1960s, when integrated circuits started appearing and led to the "third generation" machines.
Read more about Transistor Computer: The First Transistor Computer, The First Commercial Fully Transistorized Calculator, The First Commercial Fully Transistorized Large-scale Computer, Schools and Hobbyists, See Also
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“What, then, is the basic difference between today’s computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern—a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.”
—Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904)