Posted on 06/21/2018 12:13:42 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Seventy years ago was arguably the start of the modern computer age.
A machine that took up an entire room at a laboratory in Manchester University ran its first programme at 11am on 21 June 1948.
The prototype completed the task in 52 minutes, having run through 3.5 million calculations.
The Manchester Baby, known formally as the Small-Scale Experimental Machine, was the world's first stored-program computer.
It paved the way for the first commercially-available computers in a city known for centuries of science and innovation.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Before that PLUGBOARDS were used for programming - physically (wires) routing data signals between specific functional blocks of computers to do the different parts of the required calculations.
The memory programmable systems like this one were still VERY primitive and had less calculating power than your watch. They STILL performed at a workrate the equivalent of over 1000 humans with adding machines.
The first computer I worked on was the SWAC (NBS Western Automatic Computer) at UCLA in the early ‘60s. A room full of racks and CRTs (for memory). At the time, it held the record for running off the longest prime number. I had an HP45 calculator. My greatest achievement with it was running off the Fibonacci sequence by entering one number, once, and then only Enter, Roll, and Plus keys.
Beats a slide rule and a CRC book any day!
The Curta is a cool piece of history. Have you seen the Curta calculator simulator: http://www.vcalc.net/curta_simulator_en.htm ?
I enjoyed that.
I’ve just looked at your post. Thanks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t move.
One thing I won’t do is take mine aboard an airliner; looks too scary to have a TSA person find it and call me a terrorist, with my Curta being Exhibit A. Looks like I’m going to save to save it, along with my sextant and flintlock rifle, as being examples of obsolete, but really cool, technology.
I’ve just looked at your post. Thanks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t move.
One thing I won’t do is take mine aboard an airliner; looks too scary to have a TSA person find it and call me a terrorist, with my Curta being Exhibit A. Looks like I’m going to save to save it, along with my sextant and flintlock rifle, as being examples of obsolete, but really cool, technology.
I garnered multiple awards in math and science (physics, chemistry, biology).
Use it or lose it. I haven’t used it as such for decades. I can’t do what I once did.
On the other hand, I took up composition theory at 44 from scratch and astounded the teacher. I out-performed her young home-schooled musical prodigies. (She called me in to her office one day to tell me she had never seen such a performance by a novice.) Music is math on the theoretical level.
You would get some - not all - back if you spent time and needed it.
That’s the British version. There were computers before that.
Not only that, when the calculations approach the limits of the data word length, tubes gently round off the numbers, rather than clipping and truncating, as transistors are wont to do.
Some say the tube behavior gives the numerical results a "warmth" that semiconductors just don't have.
I found it fascinating...
Reminds me of the ladies who acted as "human computers" for NASA in the movie "Hidden Figures."
For example, the Atanasatt-Berry "binary" at Iowa State University, circa 1938.
Or the ZUSE series: Z1, Z2, Z3 ... The Z3 had some interesting "features."
Even later on, in the 1950s, the IBM 650 - bi-quinary and using SOAP the instructions were not placed sequentially, ...
And, computer - a machine, computor - a person.
And let's not forget Knuth's MIX - introduced in his "The Art of Computer Programming" whose real value was the solutions to the problems.
Probably very much still in use then since even then, mainframe computers were probably not entrenched in many areas...what an interesting concept.
I might be mistaken, but I seem to recall performing an exercise in a computer science class many years ago using plugboards...
That was a great book!
Heh, I don’t read much anymore because my eyes can’t take it, so I listen to the audiobook...it is read by him, and he does various voices in dialogue, which I find completely hilarious!
He has a military voice, a tough guy voice, a stupid student voice...:)
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