the ART COLONY

[SluttyShemaleAnna]

ummm, of course there were computers in the time of Einstein, and you don't get real computers without software. Einstein lived at the same time as Alan Turing, who pretty much invented the modern definition of a computer, and built the amazing Colossus machines, the first electronic, digital, programmable computers. Of course, there was no free software, as all the Colossus machines and thier software were UK military secrets and the workings of the Harvard-IBM mark 1 was a military secret of the US navy. However, Einstein lived till 1955, so he would have been around to see he first commercial computers around 1951, however costing hundreds of thousands and only used by large busineses, there wouldn't have been any free software, so Einstein and computers in the modern sense shared the planet for about 11 years. As a socialist, I'm sure Einstein would have strongly approved of free software though.

[sesame]

J. H. Felker and J. R. Harris created TRADIC, the first transistor driven computer at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1955. No vacuum tubes, just 800 transistors, Not hot, but cold & highly efficient;
Power requirement = 100 watts

But even so, dear sister Anna, it was only a giant 3 cubic feet calculator!

I guessed beforehand that someone will fill the information hole and most probably ...

[sesame]

GRH, Jimnaseum, hanky, Bionca... have you all gone into hiding or have you attained RIP status?

Post your Rant here! Grrrrrah!

'Nyway, found this interesting album cover.

[SluttyShemaleAnna]

Originally Posted by sesame

J. H. Felker and J. R. Harris created TRADIC, the first transistor driven computer at AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1955. No vacuum tubes, just 800 transistors, Not hot, but cold & highly efficient;
Power requirement = 100 watts

But even so, dear sister Anna, it was only a giant 3 cubic feet calculator!

I guessed beforehand that someone will fill the information hole and most probably ...

Transistors have no difference in function to valves, only in size, speed and heat efficiency.

Anyway, what do you think a computer is? All a computer actually does is perform a series of mathematical operations. The only difference is the scale.

Colossus could still decode German transmissions, I'd like to see you do that on your pocket calculator.

[sesame]

Arithmetic and Logic, Anna.
And computers in those days and many years to come had very limited capabilities. Forget the complex dataprocessing and analyses and image processing and rendering and sound processing and simulation and interactivity & whatever you see nowadays.

[SluttyShemaleAnna]

Originally Posted by sesame

Arithmetic and Logic, Anna.
And computers in those days and many years to come had very limited capabilities. Forget the complex dataprocessing and analyses and image processing and rendering and sound processing and simulation and interactivity & whatever you see nowadays.

Just remember, they landed on the moon with a 2mhz precessor and ~4k of RAM, you done anything more complex than that on your computer recently?

Colossus when scaled against a modern computer would have a clock speed of 5.8mhz and memory limited only by the amount of tape available.

Colossus was Turing complete. This means that it can perform the functions of a Turing machine, except not to an infinite degree. This means it can perform any algorithm given enough time and memory. In essence all Turing complete machines are non-infinite versions of a Turing machine, they simply differ in scale and speed. There is no operation that one cannot perform that another can given enough storage. Essentially if you had enough tape, good enough programming skill and a very long life span, you could apply the same image manipulations with colossus as you do with photoshop on your laptop. of course your image would be displayed as a very long binary number on a very long piece of paper. You would also have a very long beard.

But the point is, colossus is as valid a computer as your desktop, and capable of some incredibly sophisticated calculations.

[sesame]

Originally Posted by SS-Anna the battleship

There is no operation that one cannot perform that another can given enough storage. Essentially if you had enough tape, good enough programming skill and a very long life span, you could apply the same image manipulations with colossus as you do with photoshop on your laptop. of course your image would be displayed as a very long binary number on a very long piece of paper. You would also have a very long beard.

Your logic leads us to believe that those first transister computers could do all the things contemporary multi-core machines (mine is intel core2 duo) or more advanced ones can do, only much slower. Buts thats such an absurd generalization! Even you are laughing at this joke (behind your keyboard now... I can almost see it!). Things get better, its called progress, improvement, technical development. Those old machines could never render a 3d scene we do now. Or could they possibly interpret a CAT scan or simulate the flight of an unmanned aircraft? Or could they be of any use in a particle accelerator like a cyclotron? (perhaps they can be used to regulate the temperature in a coffee percolator!)

Regarding software of choice:
why dont we all stick to the assembly language and stop using all these user-friendly softwares? Lets replace Java or .Net with good old Assembly language and return to a technical stone age again. I still have my Qbasic stashed out somewhere.

[SluttyShemaleAnna]

Who said anything about transistors, I was talking about these fucking beauties: (pic 1)

This is what the inside of a 1940's computer looked like: (pic 2)

The definition of a computer starts with colossus, it was Turing complete, it was programmable, it could solve any equation that would fit within it's memory. There is no other point more significant which you could define as being hte first computer, it is genesis. There is no definition of computer that it does not meet, just because you can't play quake on it, doesn't change that. Get with the program, you cannot out nerd me, You pocket calculator by the way is less powerful than the Difference Engine... it's only asset is size.

Go read about Turing Machines, and you will see that both collosus and your PC and just pittiful attempts at approximating such a device. in the grand scale of it, they are the same, on a scale to infinity, one and one million are barely distinguishable.

[jimnaseum]

Two self portraits