How Computers Work... in 1971 353
prostoalex writes "A recent submission to my free tech books site included a title that I thought many Slashdotters would enjoy. How It Works: The Computer (published 1971 and re-published 1979) is an exciting look into this new thing called computer. The site presents the scanned pages of 1971 and 1979 editions, and you can see how the page on computer code changes over 8 years from punchcards exclusively to magnetic tapes."
General principles don't change (Score:5, Interesting)
He told me that his students call him 'the old fart' and accuse him of being antiquated. I told him that the solution was to prefix anything he said with the word 'embedded'. All of the stuff that he used to do on mini-computers in the seventies is exactly what we are doing on chips today. In fact some chips have exactly the same architecture as the minis that he used to program. Plus ca change
Wonder how much (Score:3, Interesting)
"Yeah, I remember paying almost a thousand dollars for just a ONE TERABYTE hard drive!"
Re:Women and Computers (Score:2, Interesting)
Always ENIAC (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess we now know different, with Atanasoff/Turing/Flowers. We were always taught that ENIAC was first when I did my studies back in the early '80s ....
My parents have the original (Score:2, Interesting)
The interesting thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember Ladybird books from my childhood - starting with "Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries." That book had the advice to test a battery, stick the terminals on your tongue (but it admonished you to never do it with a large battery). Just imagine trying to publish that advice now
Re:Women and Computers (Score:4, Interesting)
Computer magic (Score:3, Interesting)
Born in the early 50's with a hand in electronics since messing with old radios in my grandfathers chicken coup at age 4, I've never felt any 'magic' associated with computers. Adders, registers, programs 'written' in wire on a card were all easy to understand. I messed with early RTL IC's in high school and have played with computer hardware ever since. However, while computers are grand tools, they've never seemed 'magical'. Not like radio. Radio was and always has held a much greater fascination. I attribute this to the deterministic nature of the computer as opposed ot the 'fishing' aspect of radio. With radio, you never really know if it is going to do what you ask it to. A computer does exactly what you ask it to. Yet, I see this aura of magic in the eyes of others when they work with computers. Where does it come from? The humorous answer is that their computers don't seem to behave in a deterministic way (spare me the Mr. Softie humor). But, many postings on
These comments apply to digital electronic computers. I can't help but see some magic in wetware (mouse brains flying airplanes).
On a similar note: (Score:5, Interesting)
I owned about six or seven issues and it was the best explanation of programming, also containing loads of example programs for about six different home machines, so that no matter what machine you had you could use the same program as everyone else. The learning curve was perfect when I was a kid and isn't patronising now that I'm an adult re-reading them. Those issues almost single-handedly started my love of computing (along with the ZX Spectrum).
My brother found the entire first volume at a boot sale some years back and I read through them all again, despite knowing several languages by then (the books primarily focused on BASIC and assembly for the revelant micros, Z80 or 6502 etc.).
Recently, I purchased the missing volumes off of eBay and they are fantastic. I only wish I had the enthusiasm to actually still sit and type out my programs any more. One text adventure had about 10 pages full of encrypted hexadecimal that you had to type in by hand, perfectly, for it to work! I don't miss those days...
Reading back through them, like this book, the parts that were generic to computing, i.e. hardware, peripherals, storage etc., were very quickly outdated. However the computing and programming principles still stand strong and many's the time that my understanding of binary, assembly and the deeper workings of the computer have helped me.
But it's still amazing how quickly something can go from being state-of-the-art to back-of-the-cupboard.
trivia (Score:3, Interesting)
Having signaled that I am ancient, I may not surprise a few of you to note that the quaint and amusing quality of the book in the article is a misleading offering if you take it as history. The development of computing is both a technical and a human story of considerable depth and much more interesting reading is available.
Anybody who actually finds this stuff interesting need not confess. Just quietly make your way to the libraray and look up Paul Ceruzzi's A History of Computing [MIT PRESS] which gets all the facts and personalities straight as well as properly labeling the pictures. If you are in a hurry to waste time, there are tons of documents on line re the history of computing, for instance such as this page of links [iit.edu] from an IIT prof.
my first computer program in 1970 (Score:3, Interesting)
A few years later I implemented the algorithm in bipolar circuits for digital electronics lab at the university. The display was was blobs on an oscilliscope. I recall it did several hundred generations a second. CRT computer terminals didnt really become widespread until shortly after that in 1975. They required that the price of a half kilobyte of ROM to fall to $100 (thanks to that upstart Intel). Type fonts patterns were stored in ROM. A 5x7 bit character set required 320 bytes of ROM.
Re:Computer magic (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Women and Computers (Score:3, Interesting)
Mmm. While Ada was cool and described how Babbage's Analytical Engine could be programmed, she never actually programmed a computer [st-and.ac.uk].
Re:Women and Computers (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife likes to tell people that one of her first job titles, back in the 1970's, was "computer". This was working for a survey department in the New York state government. She did have an electronic computer available as part of the departmental equipment, and the conflict in the terminology led to a change in the job title after a couple of years.
She got the job partly because she'd done well in math classes in high school and college. While it was true that there was a lot of social pressure on girls to be technically ignorant, there was also a lot of counter-pressure from many parents and teachers, who often didn't agree with the "barefoot and pregnant" approach.
Of course, we really haven't totally outgrown that attitude yet. Lots of young women would still agree with that Barbie doll who said "Math is hard." Lots of parents and teachers are still working hard to overcome all the pressures on kids (girls and boys) to remain technically ignorant. This social battle will go on for a long time.
Another Old Computer (Score:3, Interesting)
Computer legitimacy and toys (Score:5, Interesting)
Therein lies the rub; to my folks, any computer that can be fit in a single box and doesn't live in a raised-floor room, is a toy. It's actually very black and white for them..."yes it's all very nice what those toys can do for the movies, but it takes a *computer* to process GE's payroll."
It also reminds me of when a friend of mine brought his dad in to work to show him what he did. His dad was a serious old school programmer for custom chips for Navy jets. He looked it too...checkered shirt, crew cut, pocket protector (first time I'd ever seen one). My friend shows him the *cough* Powerbuilder app we'd be working on, with its buttons and datawindows, etc., and his dad just went *pft* and waved his hand.
The fact that I can run emulators of any of those systems and they run 10x faster has never made a dent in my folks opinion. As far as they can see, and as far as my friend's dad can see, we're just playing with toys.
Anyone else had that happen?
Re:Women and Computers (Score:3, Interesting)
The ENIAC officially made the history books as becoming fully operational in 1946. For those not knowing their history, this is AFTER WWII (which ended Sept. 2, 1945 with Japnan surrendering on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay).
"The ENIAC was placed in operation at the Moore School, component by component, beginning with the cycling unit and an accumulator in June 1944. This was followed in rapid succession by the initiating unit and function tables in September 1945 and the divider and square-root unit in October 1945. Final assembly took place during the fall of 1945." see http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/comphist/eniac-stor
The question is whether or not it was completed and sctually used for meaningful work during WWII (supposedly, it was used to calculate ballistic trajectory tables). According to the Army's story, it was not. Differential Engines and calculators where the state of the art during the war. The teams that programmed those devices most certainly were then chosen to program the ENIAC. And, this is not to say that progamming the ENIAC did not begin prior to its completion.
RD
Re:Student Flashback (Score:2, Interesting)
Brings back memories... (Score:3, Interesting)
I still remember the sound of the card reader (fla-bap, flapflapflapflapflap......) and of the line printer. To recogize when my job was done, I inserted a few carefully spaced cards full of '*'s in front of the deck, producing a unique rhythmic sound pattern when printed.
Slashdot in History (Score:3, Interesting)
ca. 2500 BC: Cuneiform is dying
1835: Babbage Design: 1. Make a precisely-machined brass gear 2: now do it a million times 3. ??? 4. Profit!
1837: The Analytical Engine is Dying
1978: BSD is Dying
Re:Always ENIAC (Score:1, Interesting)
In math, calculus was either Newton or Leibniz, depending on who you listen to.
In chemistry, oxygen was either discovered by Scheele, Lavoisier or Dalton depending on if you're Swedish, French or English.
(IIRC Scheele was first, didn't publish, Lavoisier was first to publish, Dalton first to recognize it as an element)
Slightly OT: Anyone still use punch cards? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone still use punch cards? I know some states used punch cards for the Nov 2 election, but I'm wondering if there are still decks of cards at companies waiting to be run through and the output printed on green-n-white paper.
It's not a criticism or putdown question, I can believe there are some jobs on some equipment that just can't (or won't) be ported to something newer, and "what worked for us back then works for us now."
Just curious.