Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And sitting next to me, as always, with a really
Speaker 1: enigmatic smile on his face, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, having a Mona Lisa moment. Oh okay, alright, Well,
Speaker 1: you know the vacuum tubes are all humming and everything
Speaker 1: is ready to go. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 1: We have to start this this podcast off a very
Speaker 1: specific way. We do yes with listener mail, I swear
Speaker 1: you moved that on purpose always. So today's listener mail
Speaker 1: comes from Jason from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Jason says, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I was having a conversation about computer technology the other
Speaker 1: day and the people I was talking to mention something
Speaker 1: about old computers where you had to carry around a
Speaker 1: box of punch cards that served as the program. However,
Speaker 1: if you happen to drop the box and got them
Speaker 1: out of order, you essentially lost your program. I'm only
Speaker 1: twenty one and was wondering if this technology was a
Speaker 1: bit before my time, because I don't remember a thing
Speaker 1: about it. I love hearing about these older technologies and
Speaker 1: how they work, and would be grateful if you could
Speaker 1: enlighten me on this subject. I enjoy listening to you guys,
Speaker 1: and congratulations again on your one episode and too many
Speaker 1: more to come. Well, thanks, Jason. We're going to tackle
Speaker 1: that a little bit today because we're going to actually
Speaker 1: talk about computers from the past nifty You know, it's
Speaker 1: actually it's more than a bit before your time. It's
Speaker 1: actually sixty four bits before your time. Uh that you Oh,
Speaker 1: I see what you did there? So um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: upgraded your Internet. But let's let's let's let's let's take
Speaker 1: a step in the way back machine, shall we. Sherman
Speaker 1: and um try and come back all the way to
Speaker 1: the like the earliest computational sort of engines, and then
Speaker 1: we'll work our way forward. I've got some stuff I
Speaker 1: can talk about as far as the punch cards go,
Speaker 1: because I came across a great paper written by a
Speaker 1: former engineer at IBM who has uh he kind of
Speaker 1: shares his experience of using punch Cards for the first time,
Speaker 1: and it's it really is a great read. I'll just
Speaker 1: read a couple of excerpts from it to kind of
Speaker 1: give you guys an idea. But before we do that, let's, um,
Speaker 1: let's let's think back a bit. Now, computers really are
Speaker 1: number crunching machines. You know, everything you see and do
Speaker 1: on a computer is the result of different numbers being
Speaker 1: crunched in different ways. You've got you've got two different
Speaker 1: things going on. You've got a data stream coming in
Speaker 1: and you've got a set of instructions going on. The
Speaker 1: instructions tell the computer what to do to the data stream,
Speaker 1: and then you get your result. I was wondering what
Speaker 1: what all those crumbs were on my desk. Now I
Speaker 1: know they're the crumbs numbers, numbers. Yeah, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be a hell of a show, guys. I I would
Speaker 1: like to apologize on the behalf of Pallette. I mean,
Speaker 1: even I have my limits, folks. Um. So so let's
Speaker 1: let's go back to about five BC. All right, So
Speaker 1: that's that. That's what that was a PC junior, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yes, exactly. Now that was the first Apple No, no, no,
Speaker 1: five hundred BC that's it's well beyond the first apple.
Speaker 1: Did you get where I'm going with that? Okay? Anyway,
Speaker 1: so five n b C that's when you start seeing
Speaker 1: counting boards show up. This was a way for people
Speaker 1: to keep track of numbers that were bigger than ten,
Speaker 1: because you know, we have ten fingers, most of us anyway,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, if you're lucky and then um
Speaker 1: eight fingers and two thumbs. Alright, fine, fine, but if
Speaker 1: you want, if you wanted to try it exactly, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to track numbers bigger than that, then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you you had to store it in your
Speaker 1: head or if you were talking about really big numbers,
Speaker 1: you would want something to help you out. So that's
Speaker 1: where counting boards came in. A couple hundred years later
Speaker 1: that kind of evolved into the abbacus, and then we
Speaker 1: can skip ahead quite a bit. Okay, how far I
Speaker 1: was gonna go to sixteen seventy nine? You got something
Speaker 1: before that? Uh yeah, actually, uh h, I had a
Speaker 1: sixteen twenty three, which was actually there. It was before
Speaker 1: that because Leonardo da Vinci had actually drawn up plans
Speaker 1: for a calculator, a mechanical calculator. But William schickerd had
Speaker 1: created the first one in sixteen twenty three where actually
Speaker 1: built the thing. And then you know in Blaze, Pascal
Speaker 1: had the Pascalene, which was an arithmetic machine, and that
Speaker 1: was the first volume. You know, one that was the
Speaker 1: first calculator was actually created in volume around sixteen six.
Speaker 1: Actually built fifty of them. But I'm assuming that was
Speaker 1: all by hand, so we're not talking mass production. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think they had assembly lines back in sixteen Yes,
Speaker 1: but you were, I'm betting based on your data, I'm
Speaker 1: betting you're thinking, Uh, that guy who invented calculus so
Speaker 1: got free liveness, who I would like to jump up
Speaker 1: and down upon his grave for inventing calculus. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: for those of you who are going to write us
Speaker 1: and tell us that he didn't invite invent calculus a calculus,
Speaker 1: well he he independently came up with calculus at the
Speaker 1: same time, around the same time as Isaac Newton, which
Speaker 1: I always thinks, so yeah, it's it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those one things where two different brilliant thinkers come up
Speaker 1: with the same sort of system um independently and it
Speaker 1: does happen. It's pretty neat stuff when it happens. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Newton is the one you should be yelling at though right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna yell linus anyway. So he also but because
Speaker 1: he also introduced binary mathematics, and now binary mathematics, we're
Speaker 1: talking about using either of the numbers. Now people are
Speaker 1: going to write in because I'm calling it a number
Speaker 1: using either zero or one as the your digits. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's what all of modern computing is based off of.
Speaker 1: Our these binary digits, or bits as they are also known.
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm that suppose the guy who came up
Speaker 1: with this idea of using bits um Now, it would
Speaker 1: be a while before anyone had come up with a
Speaker 1: practical purpose for them as far as computing goes. But
Speaker 1: that's where it got start. What's the next date you
Speaker 1: wanted to throw out there? Because I'm gonna I want to.
Speaker 1: I've got a big list of dates here, and I
Speaker 1: have another big gap. Okay, Uh, the next date that
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up is eighteen o four, eighteen
Speaker 1: o five. Yes, that's uh, that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with computers, or does it, Because that thing you're having
Speaker 1: to do with weaving, Yes, it's unbelievable. Joseph Murray chaquad yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a guy who um yes, Jacques Jacques, Yes,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't say. Alright, so what did you said that? Right?
Speaker 1: What did Joe Mury do? Well? Joe Mury, he was
Speaker 1: he invented an automated loom. And you might say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: was an automated loom have to do with computers? Well,
Speaker 1: he did it. He used method that had already been
Speaker 1: used before, but he perfected it. It was a method
Speaker 1: where he used a punched cards to allow the needles
Speaker 1: of the loom to pass through to create specific patterns
Speaker 1: weaving patterns. Um. So it's sort of like you would
Speaker 1: see on a player piano, because that is something you
Speaker 1: might I'm guessing that those of you listing might have
Speaker 1: actually seen with your own eyes how the digits pop
Speaker 1: up and down with the holes in the paper. Right.
Speaker 1: So the yeah, the holes in these cards were what
Speaker 1: allowed certain needles to go through at certain times to
Speaker 1: create these patterns in in uh, when he was weaving.
Speaker 1: And why would this be important? Well, it would allow
Speaker 1: you to create patterns that only a master weaver could
Speaker 1: really make on his or her own. And then automated
Speaker 1: in such a way that anyone running this loom could
Speaker 1: create the same pattern, which, by the way, tended to
Speaker 1: tick off the master weavers a lot. Yeah, they actually
Speaker 1: burned quite a few of these automated looms and stop him.
Speaker 1: But but they definitely protested and as a result, textiles
Speaker 1: in France, Uh, the prices dropped quite a bit because
Speaker 1: it turned up there was a much cheaper way of
Speaker 1: producing these really nice weaves. Um. I'm surprised that you
Speaker 1: weren't the person to drop the trivia effect here, But
Speaker 1: since you left the opening for me, I'm going to
Speaker 1: point out that they also, in addition to setting fire
Speaker 1: to these limbs, like to drop wooden shoes in there,
Speaker 1: you know, the sabo that's a bot, which gave rise
Speaker 1: to the term sabotage and later would produce an awesome
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys song. So thank you, Joe Marie. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the getting back to it, the whole reason we're talking
Speaker 1: about is because the punched cards, those of course come
Speaker 1: into play later on. So the next the next day
Speaker 1: I have is one. Yeah. Yeah, that's when Babbage, Charles
Speaker 1: Babbage first invented the idea of the difference engine. Yes,
Speaker 1: he would later go on in four to come up
Speaker 1: with the analytical engine. Um, neither of which he ever
Speaker 1: actually saw a maid. No, he made bits of them,
Speaker 1: but never created an entire working engine. Now this was
Speaker 1: a shame. This was an incredible idea, and more so,
Speaker 1: the more we look back on it, the more we
Speaker 1: realize how incredible this machine would have been had he
Speaker 1: been able to create it at the time, because it
Speaker 1: took into account many of the things that modern computers
Speaker 1: actually do. I mean, it would have done these things
Speaker 1: on a different scale, but that's it's and on a
Speaker 1: mechanical scale, not an electrical scale. But it was still
Speaker 1: really cool. And the idea here was that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: if if he, if he could have created it would
Speaker 1: have been the steam powered, massive thing made out of
Speaker 1: brass and steel and you could run computations through it.
Speaker 1: And um, it's just a shame that he never you know,
Speaker 1: he he realized during his lifetime that he would never
Speaker 1: be able to actually build it. Well he uh, he
Speaker 1: had a problem. There was no the venture capitalist had
Speaker 1: not been invented yet, being on the government to uh
Speaker 1: to fund him, and they basically figured out that rather
Speaker 1: than finding navigation for ships, which is what he said
Speaker 1: he wanted to do with this machine. He wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to to uh, to run calculations to help
Speaker 1: people travel over the sea more safely and efficiently. Basically,
Speaker 1: he was an inventor who wanted to build better computational
Speaker 1: machines and they said, yeah, we're not giving you money
Speaker 1: for that. Dude. Yeah, he wanted to rush the Singularity
Speaker 1: on a lot earlier than we would have seen otherwise. Um.
Speaker 1: But despite the fact that no one built this machine
Speaker 1: for for a couple hundred years actually because um, well
Speaker 1: a little less than two hundred, I guess, uh, because
Speaker 1: it has been built uh in London. Um was that
Speaker 1: since then? And since then? Yes, yes, I think two
Speaker 1: thousand two is when when they built that that model.
Speaker 1: So that was a long time between design and production.
Speaker 1: But despite the fact that was never built, it didn't
Speaker 1: stop people from writing programs for it. Well, in know,
Speaker 1: give a hobbyist to a project. One of those would
Speaker 1: have been the Countess of Lovelace. Yes, not that they
Speaker 1: ever met, no, and but she created programs for Babbage's
Speaker 1: theoretical engine using the binary system. Hey, so there you go.
Speaker 1: You've got your first binary coded program for a computer
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. And now we can say that about
Speaker 1: lots of different things in modern times, to build lots
Speaker 1: of programs for computers that can't run them yet. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's uh. With Babbage's machine finally being built
Speaker 1: in the two, you know, the twenty first century, it's
Speaker 1: very much like every other machine that's being built in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century. It was obsolete as soon as
Speaker 1: it was exactly so, setting a precedent there. Skipping out
Speaker 1: a few more years. In eighteen fifty, you've got George
Speaker 1: Boole who invent and logic that provides the basis of
Speaker 1: of computer logic and is far too complex for me
Speaker 1: to go into here. Let's see what what what's the
Speaker 1: next thing you want to hit? I mean there, I'm
Speaker 1: jumping ahead quite a bit from here. Otherwise, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: became obvious when I was doing the research for this
Speaker 1: that there's far too much to cover in our normal
Speaker 1: time frame, so I cut out some dates here and there. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what's the next thing you have? Um, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: getting towards the uh, the early early twentieth century in
Speaker 1: my notes around nineteen eleven, actually, when a bunch of
Speaker 1: you know, basically, these machines that existed at this point
Speaker 1: where advanced calculators. If if that, I mean they were
Speaker 1: used for business purposes, and um, you know, business calculators
Speaker 1: were pretty popular. They had they had reason to, uh
Speaker 1: to do these kinds of calculations. I mean, the the
Speaker 1: census needed advanced math, um, and I mean they weren't
Speaker 1: really used for science, so you were just tabulating numbers. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, a bunch of business machine companies decided to
Speaker 1: get together and they created a new company called this
Speaker 1: is a really catchy name, Computing, tabulating Recording Company. It
Speaker 1: was so catchy that they decided to change it in
Speaker 1: to International Business Machines. Hey, one of the initials of
Speaker 1: that IBM. I think I've heard that before. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a relatively small company, but they were they
Speaker 1: were to go on to be one of the first
Speaker 1: well you know this business machine manufacturing, but they uh
Speaker 1: sort of set a precedent later on. Right. Well, well,
Speaker 1: before we get further in there, I had one date
Speaker 1: before that, nineteen that was when William DeForest invented the
Speaker 1: vacuum tube, Yes, which provided the basis for what would
Speaker 1: eventually the thing that would eventually replace the vacuum tube
Speaker 1: was the transistor, but that wasn't around yet. So we
Speaker 1: had these these machines using enormous vacuum tubes instead of tiny,
Speaker 1: relatively tiny transistors, and those are going to be important
Speaker 1: in some of the machines, were getting ready to talk
Speaker 1: about so UM. That was when IBM adopted the eighty
Speaker 1: column pun card UH format. The so the eighty columns
Speaker 1: was your typical punch card. You were asking us Jason
Speaker 1: about the punch cards. Um, this was the way that
Speaker 1: you could design programs for early computers. Now when we're talking,
Speaker 1: we're really talking about running specific um functions. Were not
Speaker 1: really talking about programs yet. That's that's kind of a
Speaker 1: little early for that. But the punched cards that IBM
Speaker 1: settled on that became the standard for them, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the machines could only read the first seventy
Speaker 1: two columns, so you'd say, well, what would you use
Speaker 1: the last eight columns for a lot of programmers would
Speaker 1: use those columns in order to create a serial number
Speaker 1: so that you could keep the punch cards in the
Speaker 1: correct order. Because anyone who has worked with a punched
Speaker 1: card system would tell you if you drop those cards
Speaker 1: and they all fall out and get out of place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a bad thing. It's even worse than slides. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, at least with slides you can look
Speaker 1: at them and go, hey, that one goes here. So
Speaker 1: then we've got six. We have Alan Turing doing the
Speaker 1: publishing is on computational numbers, which was also very important
Speaker 1: for theoretical computer principles. Um. And then I've got the
Speaker 1: the first what what the United States anyway recognizes as
Speaker 1: the the first electronic digital computer. Do you know what
Speaker 1: this one is? Um? I what sort of depends on
Speaker 1: which one is what a judge decided was the first one.
Speaker 1: So because because there is some debate about that exactly
Speaker 1: so legally in the United States anyway, the first computer,
Speaker 1: electronic digital computer was invented by John Vincent A, Tennis
Speaker 1: Offt and Clifford Berry, and it was called the A
Speaker 1: B C. Isn't that clever? Yes? For theisoft Berry computer. YEA.
Speaker 1: So that was that was But in started in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirties, it was completed in the early nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until nineteen seventy three that the US
Speaker 1: judge said that that was, in fact the first digital
Speaker 1: electronic digital computer, as opposed to one that was had
Speaker 1: an interesting acronym for a name, Yeah, eniac. That was
Speaker 1: the that was the competing computer in the court system
Speaker 1: for the first electronic digital computer, although they were sort
Speaker 1: of different. Yeah, oh no, they were very different. So
Speaker 1: so all right, so that was nineteen round eight. You've
Speaker 1: got Conrad Zeus who builds his Z one calculating machine,
Speaker 1: which was the first programmable calculating machine. Some people call
Speaker 1: that the first computer. Um, you've got You've got Touring
Speaker 1: himself working on a system that was directed by m
Speaker 1: Dr Tommy Flowers. It was a computer that no one
Speaker 1: outside of a certain group of people really knew about.
Speaker 1: It was called Colossus. Colossus, and that that was. It
Speaker 1: was so secret that that there were no contemporary reports
Speaker 1: on Colossus, and all the documentation to show how to
Speaker 1: operate Colossus was destroyed by the end of World War two.
Speaker 1: They didn't want anyone to find out how this machine worked,
Speaker 1: and it was used as a way of cracking codes
Speaker 1: and things like that. Yes, uh, I actually wrote a
Speaker 1: blog post about that in the tech Stuff blog not
Speaker 1: terribly long ago. Although you may not recognize it by
Speaker 1: its title. Um, somebody who Uh. They actually rebuilt Colossus
Speaker 1: in uh in the UK at Bletchley Park a few
Speaker 1: years ago. And uh, there's a musician who writes what
Speaker 1: they call chip tunes, which is using electronic equipment basically
Speaker 1: gaming equipment mostly, uh to write electronic music. Well, he
Speaker 1: actually went in and sampled sounds that Colossus made to
Speaker 1: make a record from it. And uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: happened to hear this BBC podcast all about it, and
Speaker 1: I learned that Colossus actually didn't crack the codes itself.
Speaker 1: It was calculating the positions of the wheels on the
Speaker 1: German code machines. It imagining that it took a room
Speaker 1: full of computer to calculate possible positions for the for
Speaker 1: the wheel, so that cryptographers could take that information and
Speaker 1: then use it to crack the codes. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure you know an iPhone could well yeah, but
Speaker 1: at the time, but at the time, you know, it's
Speaker 1: very very important. In three, you've got the Harvard Mark
Speaker 1: one digital sequence controlled computer and the first computer bug.
Speaker 1: It was a real bug. Yes, it was a moth.
Speaker 1: There was a moth inside the Harvard Mark one and
Speaker 1: it touched a relay and it made the computer fail,
Speaker 1: and thus we get bug. Yes we didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: not a features in. That's when we finally have the
Speaker 1: invention of the transistor. Now it's gonna be a while
Speaker 1: before the transistors make their way into computers, but this
Speaker 1: is what eventually allows us to create computers that are
Speaker 1: not the size of your average gym. These these old
Speaker 1: computers were enormous. They took up huge amount of space.
Speaker 1: And this is all a very formative time in computers
Speaker 1: because it's a time when people are starting to rethink
Speaker 1: what computers could be used for. Um X, Arthur Burkes,
Speaker 1: Herman Goldstein, and John von Newman came up with a
Speaker 1: paper called Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of Electronic
Speaker 1: Computing Instrument uh and Jonathan's looking at me like, why
Speaker 1: are you bringing this up? Well, it's because a lot
Speaker 1: of people consider this the basically the document that started
Speaker 1: computer science, because it was discussing things like how data
Speaker 1: and instructions should be stored together and how instructions could
Speaker 1: be uh changed by other instructions, which is something that
Speaker 1: Conrade Zeusa didn't believe. He said that that was a
Speaker 1: horrible horrible thing and it shouldn't be allowed to happen otherwise. Uh,
Speaker 1: dogs and cats living together are um. But actually this
Speaker 1: is what allowed advanced computer programming to to come about,
Speaker 1: was people started thinking about computers and how they could
Speaker 1: be used, you know, with the concepts, and as the
Speaker 1: forties roll on and and people start thinking about what
Speaker 1: computers really could be used to handle. Uh, they they
Speaker 1: that was really the end of it being a computational machine,
Speaker 1: in the beginning of it being used for you know,
Speaker 1: other kinds of of uses. So let's say go up
Speaker 1: to that's when Touring creates the a C, which was
Speaker 1: the first programmable digital computer, the ACE. He also publishes
Speaker 1: the Turing test. So the Turing test is of course
Speaker 1: the famous test of finding out, you know, are you
Speaker 1: human or are you are you computer? Right? If if
Speaker 1: a computer is able to pass the Touring test, it
Speaker 1: means that it is able to fool a certain percentage
Speaker 1: of people into thinking it's another person. Mm hmm. Touring
Speaker 1: tests are also what we used to base the Capture
Speaker 1: system on. That's the system where if you have to
Speaker 1: you know, when you're creating a profile on a on
Speaker 1: a site and you see the jefas put in a
Speaker 1: certain sequence of letters and members, like the jumbled up
Speaker 1: type written looking letters and numbers with a line through it.
Speaker 1: That's a captured test, and that's designed so that it,
Speaker 1: theoretically anyway, is easy for humans to complete, but difficult
Speaker 1: for computers to complete. That's not always the case because people,
Speaker 1: you know, there are hackers out there who are clever
Speaker 1: enough to make computers that are clever enough to pass it.
Speaker 1: And then of course you have to come up with
Speaker 1: a new test, but that's all based off the touring test. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fifty six, IBM built the first hard drive it
Speaker 1: had had a five megabyte capacity and it cost one
Speaker 1: million dollars. Yeah. Yeah, my iPod has I think eighty
Speaker 1: gigabit gigabyte capzi. Yeah, it's a it's a lot less
Speaker 1: than a million anyway. Uh. And then by fifty nine,
Speaker 1: that's when you start seeing computers using transistors instead of
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes. So the yeah, transistor was invented in forty seven,
Speaker 1: and then in fifty nine, this is is when you finally
Speaker 1: start seeing them show up in computers. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: the ones with the vacuum tubes just sound better, man,
Speaker 1: I think you're thinking about something else. So sixty one
Speaker 1: that's when you get the first integrated circuits commercially produced,
Speaker 1: And in sixty three this is this one. I like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you may have some more dates to fill
Speaker 1: in through here. Actually I skipped ahead again because I
Speaker 1: want to I want to read about this in more detail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we would love to be able to do a series
Speaker 1: of these. Actually, that cat should be a spoken word
Speaker 1: album right there, because the early days of computing. We'll
Speaker 1: just we'll we'll pitch that. If you guys all write
Speaker 1: in and say we really want to hear that, then
Speaker 1: we get to do it. If you write it and
Speaker 1: say we really don't want to hear that, then I
Speaker 1: guess we'll move on to something else. But in sixty
Speaker 1: three Douglas Inglebart gets a patent for the computer mouse,
Speaker 1: and sixty four he builds it, and uh so that
Speaker 1: was the first appearance of the computer mouse. Actually, a
Speaker 1: few years later, um he shows up and uh shows
Speaker 1: a a not just a computer mouse and a keyboard,
Speaker 1: but a graphic user interface which kind of forms the
Speaker 1: basis of some operating systems we know and love today.
Speaker 1: At least. No, I actually don't actually don't know the
Speaker 1: answer to this, I'm asking you this question is was
Speaker 1: he involved with Xerox? Um. I believe he did play
Speaker 1: a part in that. I mean, in nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: he introduced the mouse, keyboard and Windows Interface system UM
Speaker 1: at the Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until let's see, um, I got it written down here,
Speaker 1: let me chick. Seventy three was when Xerox developed Alto,
Speaker 1: which was the computer that had the graphics user interface.
Speaker 1: But then they decided there's no market for this. People
Speaker 1: aren't gonna want a computer in their homes, you know,
Speaker 1: trash it. So I'm not sure if Inglebard himself actually
Speaker 1: was involved in the in the development of Alto, but
Speaker 1: it was pretty clear that his inventions at least played
Speaker 1: a part in the production of Alto. Well again, never
Speaker 1: really went anywhere, but I would eventually show up in
Speaker 1: other products like I don't know, Windows and and Mac
Speaker 1: operating system. Well, it's uh, it's funny you would mention
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three and how people wouldn't be interested in that,
Speaker 1: because that was an unintentional segue. UM. I noticed that
Speaker 1: there was a magazine called Radio Electronics that in three
Speaker 1: published uh information about something called the TV typewriter. It's
Speaker 1: basically a terminal you could use to uh connect to
Speaker 1: a mainframe and uh more or less a hobbyist project.
Speaker 1: But you know, these are the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: get people who like to tinker, the kinds of people
Speaker 1: who might read MAKE magazine. Now. Uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: were reading Radio Electronics back then, and and they were saying, mmm,
Speaker 1: I could use that. And uh, you know, in France
Speaker 1: right about the same time, uh, you know, there was
Speaker 1: the R two E made. Uh. They had their own
Speaker 1: that was the name of the company. They had their
Speaker 1: own micro computer that used an Intel eight O eight
Speaker 1: processor and they sold five hundred of them in France.
Speaker 1: Of course, nobody heard of them in the United States,
Speaker 1: So in the States that would be It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: until about nineteen seventy five when Ed Roberts does signs
Speaker 1: the Altar hundred yes for a micro instrumentation telemetry systems
Speaker 1: and fifty name for why are the computer manufact So
Speaker 1: he introduces this kit for three seven dollars. You can
Speaker 1: you can buy the kit and build your own personal computer.
Speaker 1: And it is wildly successful within the computer world. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they were on the cover of Popular Electronics.
Speaker 1: Saved the company they were they were basically a custom
Speaker 1: chip manufacturer, and they were they were tanking. Now what's
Speaker 1: interesting is back in uh you technically had the first
Speaker 1: personal computer. It was like the ken Back one, but
Speaker 1: that machine didn't really take off and it wasn't called
Speaker 1: a personal computer. Actually, Ed Roberts was the one who
Speaker 1: kind of coined that phrase the personal computer, and PC
Speaker 1: has been around ever since. Um. Also one that was
Speaker 1: when Pong was invented. Oh yeah, didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: play it on, but they had the game. Now, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to use the al Tear, you had to
Speaker 1: program it in assembly code. And there were a bunch
Speaker 1: of switches on the front and a bunch of lights
Speaker 1: and basically you'd flip switches and watch the output of
Speaker 1: the lights and uh yeah, exactly, not exactly know, uh
Speaker 1: you know, that was how you would get an output
Speaker 1: on the on the machine. And you might say, who
Speaker 1: would care about something like that, Well, the Homebrew Computer
Speaker 1: Club would care. There were a bunch of people in
Speaker 1: California who were interested in programming, and a couple of
Speaker 1: guys named Steve were members of that club. Yeah, Steve
Speaker 1: Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who later went on to
Speaker 1: actually were Atari employees at one point but later went
Speaker 1: on to UH start Apple Computer and and in in
Speaker 1: v they were working on they were starting to build
Speaker 1: their own computers within UH in a garage, which is
Speaker 1: the way almost every technology company in California started. And
Speaker 1: there were a couple of guys out east to who
Speaker 1: were looking at the Altare for programming, UM, Paul and
Speaker 1: Bill Billy Billy Billy Gates and Paul Allen. I assume
Speaker 1: you're talking about. Yeah, so the Altaire actually has a
Speaker 1: place in the pantheons of computer history for both Apple
Speaker 1: and Microsoft. So, yeah, Jobs in Bosnia they're building computers
Speaker 1: in the garage, Gates and Allan they are building basic compilers,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of laying the foundation of Microsoft.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about compilers in a second when I do
Speaker 1: a quick rundown of the punch card system. UM. And
Speaker 1: then in nineteen seventy six, you have the Cray one
Speaker 1: super computer. Yes, actually the Cray. Uh it's it's named
Speaker 1: after was it was it? Seymour Cray, Yes, Seymour Crazy,
Speaker 1: I was right, Cray And no, he's but but Seymour Cray,
Speaker 1: it actually developed another computer, the world's first supercomputer actually
Speaker 1: way back in nineteen sixty four, um, and that was
Speaker 1: the c d C sixty six hundred. But the Cray one,
Speaker 1: of course left in the dust. That was, you know,
Speaker 1: twelve years later. So it's much more advanced computer, especially
Speaker 1: if you follow the logect of Gordon Moore, and it
Speaker 1: can leap tall buildings in a single bound. So that
Speaker 1: that's where I cut off. I'm like, all right, seventy six,
Speaker 1: we've got that. By then, you've got the Apple computer
Speaker 1: coming out. Um, you've got the genesis of Microsoft. We're
Speaker 1: really entering the modern era of computers. But um, that's
Speaker 1: where I was like, okay, I'm not going any further
Speaker 1: than seventy six. That could be a different podcast. Computers
Speaker 1: with the modern era. Yeah, that's that's really the transition
Speaker 1: because right around then and through their early es, IBM
Speaker 1: released the first personal computer, and uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: other the Windows system of using the graphical Union user
Speaker 1: interface and the mouse, you know in the the Macintosh
Speaker 1: and the Amiga and ther St and Windows and all
Speaker 1: the other computers that that started out with that, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's sort of up to where we are today,
Speaker 1: more or less with refinements. Yep, well, let me hit
Speaker 1: this punch cards thing really quickly. We're running kind of
Speaker 1: along on this podcast problem. Let's obviously we're both passionate
Speaker 1: about this historical stuff. Um, who knows, maybe stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history class will try and cover computing at
Speaker 1: some point and we'll be like, ha ha, beat you
Speaker 1: to it. So this I'm I'm pulling this information from
Speaker 1: a paper called Programming with Punched Cards, which was written
Speaker 1: by Dale Fisk, who was an engineer at IBM. This
Speaker 1: was talking about his his experiences back in the early
Speaker 1: seventies and if you wanted to write a program using
Speaker 1: punch cards, here's kind of how he lays it out.
Speaker 1: Writing a program began with a paper tablet of coding forms.
Speaker 1: Each page of the tablet had about fifty lines on it,
Speaker 1: and each line on the form would eventually be converted
Speaker 1: into a punched card and stowed away in a box
Speaker 1: with a bunch of other cards. So you would fill
Speaker 1: out one of these forms, you take it to a
Speaker 1: key punch operator, or if you knew how to use
Speaker 1: the key punch machine yourself, you'd use it yourself. You
Speaker 1: would encode each line into a card, and then you
Speaker 1: would have a deck which was called your source deck. Now,
Speaker 1: for programmers, this is the essentially the same as talking
Speaker 1: about source code. This is oh that humans can easily interpret.
Speaker 1: Machines aren't very aren't good at that they can interpret
Speaker 1: source code, but people can. And it's very important because
Speaker 1: the next step is you'd feed the source code into
Speaker 1: a computer that would translate it into object code. You
Speaker 1: would get an object deck of cards. Now that process,
Speaker 1: that's what you're putting your your source code through a compiler.
Speaker 1: That's what compilers do. They translate from source code into
Speaker 1: object code. So you're compiling your program. Now you have
Speaker 1: an object code. You have an object deck. This is
Speaker 1: what allows you to create to run a program on
Speaker 1: a computer. And he talked about the process of running
Speaker 1: this object deck through a computer, and then he got
Speaker 1: this big stack of paper and it essentially told him
Speaker 1: that everything went pear shaped. Shortly after the first couple
Speaker 1: of cards went through and it turned out that his
Speaker 1: source code, one of the source code cards was missing
Speaker 1: a comma, so he had to go back and insert
Speaker 1: the comma, redo the punch card, replace the one that
Speaker 1: had been put in there. Run the source deck through
Speaker 1: the compiler again, get a new object deck, try it again,
Speaker 1: same mistakes, another mistake rather, and this is the way
Speaker 1: they debugged programs in the early days. Like if you
Speaker 1: had not written it out properly, or if you had
Speaker 1: key punched it in incorrectly, then your program wouldn't work
Speaker 1: and you would have to locate the problem and put
Speaker 1: build a new punch card, or several new punch cards
Speaker 1: if if it were was a problem that that spanned
Speaker 1: more than one, and then run the object or the
Speaker 1: source deck rather through the compiler again. Get an object
Speaker 1: deck that, run that through the computer and see if
Speaker 1: your program worked. This is why people to write software
Speaker 1: for me. So yeah, and of course keep in mind
Speaker 1: there are no monitors. You're getting printed information here. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not seeing it in in the sense of the
Speaker 1: way we see things on our computers today. So that
Speaker 1: kind of gives you the rundown on what it was
Speaker 1: like to do to create a program on the punch card. Now,
Speaker 1: the paper that Dale Fisk wrote, it's about eighteen nineteen
Speaker 1: pages long, and it's a great read. It's not written
Speaker 1: in in super technical language, a lay person could easily
Speaker 1: follow it, and so I highly recommend hounting that paper
Speaker 1: down again. It's called programming with punched cards, so you
Speaker 1: can google that and find the pdf online. Now, um,
Speaker 1: that pretty much wraps up our our discussion about computers
Speaker 1: from the past, which is a good thing because we're
Speaker 1: running over thirty minutes now, all right, so let's wrap
Speaker 1: this up. Guys, if you have anything you want to
Speaker 1: say to us, if you have any comments or corrections
Speaker 1: or compliments or suggestions, you can write us. Our email
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can learn all about these computing systems on our
Speaker 1: website how stuff works dot com. And hey, if you
Speaker 1: if you have technical questions that you might need answers
Speaker 1: to very quickly, you might ask someone who can do
Speaker 1: more tech support type answers, because not that we don't
Speaker 1: want to get those questions, but we might be less
Speaker 1: helpful and it might take us longer to get to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out we have a lot of stuff going on,
Speaker 1: so if your computer is acting funny, we're probably not
Speaker 1: the best people to talk to, but we do appreciate
Speaker 1: your email. You guys are swell, So with that said,
Speaker 1: I guess this wraps up another episode and we will
Speaker 1: talk to again really soon. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the new tech stuff
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