Void's Forums

This was printed in a 1954 issue of Popular Mechanics:

That's not entirely uncorrect, either. Given the amount of money and research that was devoted to computing technology at the time, and assuming a linear extrapolation over 50 years, that's exactly what a computer would look like today. However, for whatever reasons (probably military, based on missile defense), computer technology grew algebraically instead of linearly. Moore's Law and all that. There is no way anyone in the 50s would have any idea how much time and effort and money would be shoveled into the computer.

I personally believe that someone from the 50s would be more impressed with a cheap pocket calculator than a modern personal computer. The advances in GUI and data storage/processing power would not be very impressive to them, without a frame of reference. However, the fact that really difficult logarithmic and square root problems can be solved by tapping a couple buttons would blow them away, since such problems had to be worked out laboriously by hand for 1000s of years.

calculators impress me! i bought a scientific calculator for 7 quid the other day (maybe USD12.50?) and it can do tons of stuff really easily, and so intuitively. you type everything the same order you would write it. for me, who knows to always type for instance the square root sign after the number, i have to relearn how to use it in the same way as i would write! (if you see what i mean)

and a calculator that can do all this cost tons when i was in high school. only 2 or 3 people in my year could afford to own one, and graphical calculators were just appearing in our school when i was leaving (and i'm not all that old!)

but i have to say that modern personal computers, while a miracle of minituarisation and interface advances etc, have also algebraically (exponentially?) increased in frustration, potential errors and general confusingness to the uninitiate. so perhaps the huge fortran models should not have been completely scrapped!

i like the monitor on that 1950s beauty by the way! clearly the state of the art in 2004, that one!

The calculators I used in school are on this page:

http://www.thocp.net/hardware/ti_calculators.htm

Those '73 calculators could still estimate the square root of two, to perhaps 7 decimal places, in 2 seconds. That's a heck of a lot faster than I could do it.

Reminds me of a quote from Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs":
(paraphrased)

"...calculators of almost other-worldly power are now given away free with a gallon of gasoline..."

those calculators don't look too different from the sort we had when i was in primary school, which now i think about it was the early eighties.

Perhaps a more interesting question:
What will computers be like in 2024?

Maybe i'm being selfish, but i hope they aren't all that different than the ones we have now. I enjoy computers and the internet a lot the way they are, and if we start having to talk to our monitors, or use holographic heads-up displays, I don't think I would enjoy them as much. It's time to transfer technology away from consumer products, and focus on societal products, like energy, energy storage, and air/water filtration.

I hope that by 2024 we will no longer have computers and will have reverted back to paper. We (people) are getting too stupid. I am also thinking about dropping my computer career and becoming a truck driver. If only I had some cash stashed away that's what I would do. Oh well, I'll probably be 6 feet under by then anyhow. :)

Considering the politics ban on this forum, I will refrain from sharing my opinions on how some might see the stupidification of modern people to be a good thing.

Suffice it to say that you only become stupid when you stop learning, and the human race has accumulated and stored enough information over the last few millenia to keep me busy for a long time. It ought to be possible, for instance, to design a simple wire/swith/bulb experiment that would prove whether electricity flows from positive to negative, or from negative to positive. That's one that keeps me awake at night.

Trying to keep 1 step ahead of the 5cr1pt k1dd135 is what keeps me up at night (including tonight). Can you imagine what would happen if all computers on earth just quit working? Society as we know it would come to a halt. It's downright scary if you think about it.

Here's a link to what a really expensive calculator looked like when I went to school. I couldn't afford one quite this nice, but I still have two that got a heck of a lot of use when I was in high school and college:

http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/sliderules ... -dll-1.jpg

The batteries never died at inconvenient times and it never needed to be plugged in

Jim

i have no idea how to use a slide rule, but i think it'd be a useful skill to have (and a useful piece of equipment too).

Calum,

It's actually not difficult at all. The only issues are that you have to keep track of decimal places yourself and that for most calculations, dependimg on which end of the logarithmic scale you are reading, getting several places of accuracy can be a bit of a guessing game. But for multiplication, square roots, and trigonometric functions, they were pretty simple and quick to use. Though I do have to admit while I do still have my old sliderules on my desk in my office at home, the cheap TI calculator is what I always grab for. About the only use my sliderules ever get any more is to baffle/amaze/whatever any students who may be at my house and who ask about them.

If you're at all curious, I found this URL that will give you a quick idea of how they work.

http://www.sliderules.clara.net/a-to-z/background.htm

Jim

Unfortunately, that image seems to be a hoax.

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp
http://news.com.com/Photo+Image+that+du ... 84076.html

i know it's really easy to say things like this after the hoax is exposed, but you can, if you know it's a faked image, see that the TV screen and teletype are not from the same picture as the rest, in my opinion...

and re: sliderules, anything could be helpful as i will need a miracle to do my upcoming maths course, and an explanation of simple concepts that i should already know (along with perhaps a slightly more hands on approach to calculation) can only be more of a help than a hindrance!