Gadgetory

hey everyone I am at the Computer History Museum and I'm joined by Jim Vincent yes whoo it was out here at GGC with us and now we've been shooting some cool stuff inside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California and what was some of the coolest stuff we saw give us a quick run-through well I thought the coolest thing we saw was the first disk drive which was the RAM Mac 5 megabytes of storage for renting a machine with it was $30,000 a month and I guess in our day we're gonna see the end of this or in the next few years so yeah this is the beginning and we're gonna see the end we saw some of the first fast transistorized computers like the IBM stretch which was millions of dollars and they only built nine of them and the crane line we saw a Cray one and the 10 million dollar machine wasn't here this time but previously we saw something called the Babbage machine which is a mechanical computer from the 1800s they tried to build the one that was a full computer but they never managed the manufacturer it was too hard called the analytical engine so we saw a simpler version which was called the difference engine right and then there's a PDP machine the PDP one which was the game made the first computer game space Wars and it actually actually if you go here at certain times they'll actually demo space where where you can actually play it on the hardware from 1960 damn cool so there's a hole I read a history book on this not long ago and as you were saying basically first computer game Japan how you look at the oscilloscope games yeah and then a multiplayer - it was multiplayer two-player game yeah and that was I mean that's a big deal I was a sort of smash hit on college campuses and things like that and that machine had a whopping nine kilobytes of memory yeah and was how expensive was it doing now they had the price it was a hundred and twenty thousand dollars something right for a nine kilobyte machine in 1961 great I took him a large amount of space yeah how big it's a lot of electricity here you would he would pay big bills on that one yeah yeah we were not allowed to use flash or any additional lighting because none of the artifacts they don't want any of the artifacts damaged but any ambient light it's always pretty damn old I mean we saw like analog computers in there yeah we saw a memory from computers from 1951 there's pieces of an even older computer called Nene AK but because it's privately owned we were not allowed to photograph it but if you come and see it for your own personal purposes you can actually take a picture of it we did see the univac now we saw parts of the universe yeah you know part of whatever parts of what's ever left yeah when mercury memory I had mercury delay memories one where they sent sound waves down Wickery tubes and with cycle right it's a refresh was how long it took from the Mercury's wave to get down into it yeah and I sent sound waves down it right vibrations and then well you know one by you know vibration would be a 1 & no vibration be a zero right based on the timing and then it would have to recycle it it would cut you have to copy it back right they would have to resend it again right unless you changed it and we also want a vacuum to be stopped yeah so vacuum tubes predated transistors yeah everything's on transistors now have billions of them and some stuff like the new we just saw that past pascal tesla p100 yeah 15 billion transmitters right and then vacuum tubes were sort of physical actual tubes like glass - yeah I think the sage is one of the biggest vacuum tube computers I believe it had 40,000 tubes and it had a whopping 256 kilobits of memory our kilobytes to infinity of kilobytes on a huge unit and this thing took four stories yes I know it was the most expensive computer ever made they don't even really say what it cost but if it's in the tens of billions of dollars through those devices yes I think they built above 23 of them is the four stories right and then they had the the one thing that stands out the most to me there's like console that had like a cigarette lighter yeah every K every console on the sage came with a ashtray and a cigarette lighter like you'd see in your car you know you press it in and you get that yeah so that's convenient for 1950s I'm assuming everybody that worked on the MIR smoking being one of them that was the sage and sage stands for something that was used for defense right it's a big defense from it was a big defense to four Russian bombers coming with nuclear weapons one silly Russia had all these missiles it was pretty obsolete but they did run this crazy thing 458 into the early eighties I think the last one was turned off in 1983 so they ran this thing for a long time now let's talk about some of the earlier supercomputers so the cray-1 Cray one was 76 I think something like that the we saw the stretch which was 1961 right it was the fastest computer in the at the time yes stretch model 70 30 I believe yeah I worked on a Cray 1 s by the way back in the 80s and I thing was running at a whopping 70 megahertz they've got about a hundred and seventy mega flops so are you're getting what out of a flop out of a pascal you're getting a double precision talon precision it's not as much fun yeah three three and a half yeah teraflop versus 150 Giga mega flop on a 10 million dollar machine from 1976 FP 32 I think 10.6 teraflops did he care about FP 16 and 20 teraflops Cray was F P 64 was it yeah well and it was sort of like a BX that you'd see on a modern Intel the vectors rather where they were 64 long instead of I think they're smaller on an on an AV X but of course that was single core and cross front so there's a stretch to Cray and then we saw some of the older pcs - with Apple one yeah well on what a spawn from the Xerox machine that's right the Xerox PARC right so we saw the Xerox PARC and that was 74 74 and next to that in the Computer History Museum was the first prototype of a mouse made out of wood yeah that was from the 60s it was a it was a copy but it was something there early 60s it may have one I had one red switch on and that was your mouse button yeah look like it didn't look too comfortable yeah it's literally holding a woodblock it's what it is and I did have it ballin it how did it yeah it had a wheat wheel in each direction so they actually had wheels to roll it this way and when so just XY just XY and that would have to calculate the diag no and near that we saw something earlier mice that were there's like a 3-button ugly beige thing that was from the park yeah the one that was a rapist said that would Mouse was from the park so that was the park we saw the some of the first Windows machines along with a half of one they had original IBM PC right from 1981 they have lots of they have a lot here it's worth visiting yeah quite the place yeah absolutely they had a lot of consoles to the original you know that Terry 2600 which probably there's a thousand of them for sale on eBay right even though they're from the 70s there's plenty of modern considered modern I think yeah compared to some of the other stuff we saw but the Atari 2600 there was I mean they had everything up to Halo basically it was yeah that was modern as a cat so a very cool place though Computer History Museum this is in Monrovia montréal California right yeah so if you ever out here it's worth a check and then Intel has a museum - it's a lot I think sort of personally less impressive than this one way less impressive but that's all in town but it's free it's this one you gotta pay like $15 yeah if you're nearby the check out the Intel one as well because you can see some of the old wafers and stuff yeah a couple waivers in here there's some city in the original microprocessor the four thousand four right and then which became the eight thousand eight and then the 80 88 which was the bipm PC yeah 286 486 yeah all derivative yeah so that's in the mountain view area as well but as always if you like this coverage at the patreon link the post roll video check out the Computer History Museum online I believe they have YouTube channel as well they have a YouTube channel and thanks for watching we'll see you all next time