61 Year Old Computer Restored, Turned On

[Bruce Wayne]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/21/tech/innovation/witch-computer-restoration/index.html?c=tech

 

[Shangas]

Can you surf the internet on it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's amazing when you think about it. Computers not too far removed from that one made it possible to put men on the moon. Today, decades later, unimaginable pocket-sized computer power makes it possible for a fourteen-year-old girl to download a bootleg copy of "Twilight."

 

[Bruce Wayne]

My smartphone is more powerful than the Lunar Lander!

 

[Stearmen]

My smartphone is more powerful than the Lunar Lander!

I have a friend that worked on the Lunar Lander simulator. He said the same thing many have said, your late 80s hand held calculator was more powerful then all the computers on both the LEM and Command Capsule combined!

 

[Stearmen]

Computer Bug

We get the term Computer Bug from these early machines. seems one of the WWII computers was not working right, it was traced to a actual bug smashed in one of the relays!

 

[AtomicEraTom]

I remember when my dad bought his pickup truck new, back in 2000, the dealer told him "This thing has more gizmos than Apollo" lol

 

[rocketeer]

And it's British

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

From 1957 till his retirement in 1987 my Dad worked in what would now be called IT and he remembered working with the early Univac computers that took up an entire room.

My personal favorite is the Babbage Differential Machine.

[video=youtube;KL_wy-CxBP8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_wy-CxBP8[/video]

 

[Old Rogue]

We get the term Computer Bug from these early machines. seems one of the WWII computers was not working right, it was traced to a actual bug smashed in one of the relays!

That's true. The term was coined by Admiral Grace Hopper. Here's some info on her and a photo of the actual bug...

http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/hopper_grace.htm

 

[dhermann1]

I have also read that the term "bug" has been found in letters dating back another hundred years, with basically the same meaning. So . . . there you are.

 

[Talbot]

That's true. The term was coined by Admiral Grace Hopper. Here's some info on her and a photo of the actual bug...

http://www.history.navy.mil/bios/hopper_grace.htm

Quite a gal. The term computer moth doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

 

[scottyrocks]

I enjoyed that article. The machine reminds me of a picture of my dad in the very early '60s with a then state-of-the-art tape-driven computer. He was a design engineer. It wasn't as big as the machine featured in the article, but it was still big. I'll have to find the photo and scan it.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

I think a long time ago, I recall seeing an article in a time magazine that showed one of the first computers being used by the government, it stated the computer was so large the building it was in was about a city block in total size.

About 12 years ago, some young man that was a student at MIT was developing a new hard drive for computers, it was a liquid filled tube that would rotate, worked at an insane real time speed, and some "agency" was telling him if he had it placed into a production, they would take the technology from him. He was being interviewed by Alan Alda (T.V. Star from the old MASH series) for Nova or some PBS Television show about new technology for electronics and science and medical advances. If my memory serves me correctly, the invention this young man from MIT was developing was so powerful, it would be like having several thousand computers hooked up as one, it would fit in a small pouch he would wear on his side like a "fanny pack", and he had some self made pumps in his shoes that would generate the power to make this work. His screen was an optical piece from an old targeting system that was originally on Cobra/Apache attack helicopters, he could look into it as they are a monocle on one eye and keep his other eye for looking at what he was doing walking around. After seeing that program, I have often wondered where we will be in a hundred years from now in science, computers, medical areas of life? Yeah I know, a hundred years from now, I won't be around...if I was, geez, I think I would be sort of grumpy, no? LOL!