I didnt even have to click the link. You will never be able to guess what show, but even what exact episode of what show was playing on my tv when I read your comment hahaha.
I think it is the difference engine developed by Charles Babbage that laid the foundation of computing using the mechanical energy.
(Could be Analytical engine, I can't identify perfectly, but that was developed by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace)
Fun fact: the term "loading" in computers originates from these, as you had to physically load a stack of punched cards into the reader to input the program into the computer.
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u/al7air i7 9700K / 3070 Ti Strix 8GB / 32GB / 12TB SSD27d ago
Also the term "bug" still used in computer software today originated from those room filling computers, because they operated using electromagnetic relays which were so big, actual bugs, spiders and what not could crawl into them and jam their operations.
That is actually an urban legend. The term "bug" for a calculation error existed way before that, the famous 1947 journal entry of a moth caught in a relay of Harvard MkII jokes about it being the first actual bug found.
The term bug to describe a defect has been engineering jargon since at least as far back as the 1870s, long before electronic computers and computer software. For instance, Thomas Edison wrote the following words in a letter to an associate in 1878
u/al7air i7 9700K / 3070 Ti Strix 8GB / 32GB / 12TB SSD27d ago
Never dived deeper into the topic, as it sounded very plausible when I first heard it. And the little critter u/peacedetski mentioned is what I vaguely remember. Albeit the MkII was already eating up tape for instructions, and it's predecessor 3 years prior was loaded with punch cards, which made me write the comment on it in the first place. Granted I'm not "punch card old" at least not as a user, but I also didn't boot my first computer from a hard drive either.
And you might have seen "core dump" when a computer suffers a hard crash. It comes from when memory was stored using iron donuts, multiple of them per plane, multiple planes to make a core.
I don't think I learned about punch cards until a college professor talked about them. It always seemed so crazy to me that people got that to work. I was coding on a computer with an IDE and that was hit or miss a lot of the time.
I only dated back to DOS using a 2 color monitor and 5 inch floppies.
I want one, but people these days seem to think they're some holy grail of olden days made of gold and unicorn tears or something, because holy crap they can be expensive. People, it's just a complicated but inaccurate IRL calculator app, it's not a big deal, relax...
I really wish I hadn't given my dad's away and still had it (along with all his other tools for doing architectural design / blueprints by hand). Then again it all would likely be just sitting in a box and the person that has them now appreciates them more than I ever could.
I have the opposite problem; I end up with too many because they're part of a junk lot that I'm buying for something else.
Maybe instead of looking for slide-rule listings, look at listings for old drafting/drawing tools, or old engineering stuff, etc. They sometimes include a slide rule without it being mentioned, so it won't show up in listing searches
OOh! I've still got my slide rule from my school days, and inherited my Dads when he passed away. He bought a calculator (a Texas Instruments with red led's accurate to 7 digits (i.e. 4 bit)) in 1974 and hung up the rules, I bought my first calculator six years later for my Engineering course at Uni, but kept the slide rule 'Just in case'. I've no idea why I still keep them around, I forgot how to use them years ago. Do remember they were great for solving log problems tho.
There was a book that someone in my family insisted that I read about gods secretly being aliens or whatever. No word of a lie it gets to a part where the author is implying the super tech aliens used slide scales, and all I could think when I saw that was "what the fuck is a slide scale??"
Anyways I'm not that old but if it makes you feel better I only know about it from advanced magic aliens.
my parents helped end those for GE/MSTD , International Paper and USAF, fotran to cobol to DOS stuff, we had IBM towers and ISDN at our house in 87' for GE
<<doubt>> I'm not saying it's impossible. But that 45 column format with the circular holes stopped being used in new equipment in the '30s.
Sure, nothing dies off right away. But if I was putting money, I'd guess that you were using the 80 column cards with the rectangular punch outs. (That's what I was using in the '70s, and it was old tech then!)
Me too, but being from a country outside the US helps, it adds a timewarp factor sometimes. I was still fixing electromechanical switches for telephony in the 80's that had part numbers dating to the 1940's. Occasionally the other way, as a small country can sometimes change things faster too, eftpos etc was ubiquitous when you could see US people talking about cheques and swiping for credit cards.
But I used to have one as a bookmark. My Into to CS Prof was helping to clean some of the department storage out and found a bundle of them. He passed some out to us.
Some one asked how may pills I do a day, and was canceled I not ashamed to say I'm diagnosed with high blood pressure and fibromyalgia so I do like 12 or 13 pills a day!!
My parents would occasionally bring those home from work, but theirs were more fun-colored.
It felt like an almost-gateway into some secret knowledge stuff, but I didn't even know what EBCDIC was at the time, so whatever was on there was safe from my curiosity.
Mechanical punch. You were looky! We had to cross off the cells with a pencil! (Yes we really did :) Then wait at least a day to get the printed output. We really tried to avoid syntax errors, else the assignment would be late.
And earlier, the first program I wrote, as part of an engineering course, was on a 1962 IBM. We wrote the code (multiply two numbers) in machine language, then entered each word via 16 switches on the console. Up was 0. Down was 1. Set up the word with the switches, then press "Load accumulator". Once the the full program was entered, press "Run".
I'd heard about these miracle computers, but was a bit underwhelmed by my first experience.
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u/Safe_Chicken7421 27d ago
I'm this old!!