1
00:00:00,012 --> 00:00:04,423
So I hope you enjoyed that.
Again I tried to showcase the, the

2
00:00:04,423 --> 00:00:10,409
juxtaposition of the mechanical computers
moving to the electronic computers and how

3
00:00:10,409 --> 00:00:13,634
it was a collective effort by, by many
people.

4
00:00:13,634 --> 00:00:17,592
And so one of the things that happened
sort of after this.

5
00:00:17,592 --> 00:00:22,649
After the war, they didn't need Bletchley
Park anymore, so they shut the Bletchley

6
00:00:22,649 --> 00:00:25,891
Park down.
And all these people who had worked on all

7
00:00:25,891 --> 00:00:30,923
these things and built all these things
went to various academic places like MIT,

8
00:00:30,923 --> 00:00:35,008
Manchester, Harvard.
And what happened was, what they had done

9
00:00:35,008 --> 00:00:38,085
was a secret and they could say nothing
about it.

10
00:00:38,085 --> 00:00:43,355
But they had realized, and they couldn't
forget that electronics could do

11
00:00:43,355 --> 00:00:49,305
computation, and electronics could do
computation far more rapidly than anything

12
00:00:49,305 --> 00:00:54,052
we've ever imagined before.
So a series of computers came up really

13
00:00:54,052 --> 00:00:58,002
fast after the war.
They got you know relaxed the wars over,

14
00:00:58,002 --> 00:01:01,242
we feel good.
But let's start thinking about what we

15
00:01:01,242 --> 00:01:05,841
would build if we were going to do
computations like weather, or other kinds

16
00:01:05,841 --> 00:01:09,588
of cool computations instead of just
wartime computations.

17
00:01:09,588 --> 00:01:13,819
And, and so these next generation of
computers that are often thought of as the

18
00:01:13,819 --> 00:01:17,784
first computers in the world, which are
really kind of like the follow-on

19
00:01:17,784 --> 00:01:20,736
computers to the computers built at
Bletchley Park.

20
00:01:20,736 --> 00:01:27,180
And so the immediate postwar period in the
1940s, took the US and UK code breaking.

21
00:01:27,180 --> 00:01:32,306
There was similar things in the United
States as well, and I'm sure elsewhere,

22
00:01:32,307 --> 00:01:35,606
where that pushed the envelope of
computation.

23
00:01:35,606 --> 00:01:41,079
But folks that had built all these things
for wartime purposes switched and moved

24
00:01:41,079 --> 00:01:45,540
into academic and peacetime purposes.
And so they built I mean, if you think

25
00:01:45,540 --> 00:01:49,824
about it, they have less pressure but they
already know it's feasible and they can

26
00:01:49,824 --> 00:01:53,492
kind of sit back and relax and go like ok,
that would be a little better.

27
00:01:53,492 --> 00:01:57,128
We kind of compromise there, so they built
some really elegant computers.

28
00:01:57,128 --> 00:02:00,283
And you know, they can all sort of fight
over who's the first.

29
00:02:00,284 --> 00:02:06,306
But ultimately, they all pretty much came
out very quickly, one after another, cause

30
00:02:06,306 --> 00:02:10,171
the idea had escaped.
So this is the beginning of sort of

31
00:02:10,171 --> 00:02:14,755
electronic computation.
The fact that electricity can be used to

32
00:02:14,755 --> 00:02:20,085
represent data, and that can be used to
change data very rapidly as compared to

33
00:02:20,085 --> 00:02:25,010
other things that used physical.
Storage for computer information so this

34
00:02:25,010 --> 00:02:27,767
was a great time.
Electronic computation from the

35
00:02:27,767 --> 00:02:32,317
specialized to the general purpose and
these people really built some exciting

36
00:02:32,317 --> 00:02:36,607
computers many of the architectures of
which are, are, are kind of still sort of

37
00:02:36,607 --> 00:02:38,822
with us.
A lot of the architectures were

38
00:02:38,822 --> 00:02:43,242
innovative, the innovative architectures
we still use today were conceived and

39
00:02:43,242 --> 00:02:48,158
imagined there.
Also in the post war period in 1950s, as a

40
00:02:48,158 --> 00:02:55,578
bit of an aside there was a, there was a
realization by the, certainly the federal

41
00:02:55,578 --> 00:03:01,194
government United States that academics
were kind of useful.

42
00:03:01,194 --> 00:03:06,529
Right, I mean the people that really had
won the war for them were academics.

43
00:03:06,529 --> 00:03:11,917
Not just computer people but also people
that built, designed airplanes and radar

44
00:03:11,917 --> 00:03:16,047
and things like that.
And so there's a sense that the safest

45
00:03:16,047 --> 00:03:19,694
country was the country that had the
smartest people.

46
00:03:19,694 --> 00:03:24,924
And in many ways, the entire US
educational system was built to find

47
00:03:24,924 --> 00:03:29,883
really bright scientists and educated them
very effectively.

48
00:03:29,883 --> 00:03:36,375
And so and so there was a real boom in
building science departments national

49
00:03:36,375 --> 00:03:41,551
science foundation was fund created right
after the war.

50
00:03:41,552 --> 00:03:46,607
And, and so United States and other
governments really greatly invested in

51
00:03:46,607 --> 00:03:50,025
research.
And there's this movie Beautiful Mind and

52
00:03:50,025 --> 00:03:55,030
I've got the URL there at the bottom.
It's not required, but I love the movie.

53
00:03:55,030 --> 00:04:00,329
And it gives you a sense in particular the
scene I'm pointing to, gives you a sense

54
00:04:00,329 --> 00:04:05,091
of how mathematicians were in many ways
treated like celebrities.

55
00:04:05,091 --> 00:04:10,427
So I will pause just for a minute, in case
you want to pause this video and then go

56
00:04:10,427 --> 00:04:15,510
take a look at the John Nash video.
So of course John Nash was a real person

57
00:04:15,511 --> 00:04:18,991
he received his PhD in mathematics at
Princeton.

58
00:04:18,991 --> 00:04:23,845
At 22 years old he was a prodigy.
He was on the mathematics faculty at MIT

59
00:04:23,845 --> 00:04:27,750
in 1951 to 1958, and he had adult onset
schizophrenia.

60
00:04:27,751 --> 00:04:32,725
Right before he was 30 years old and, and
it was quite a severe case.

61
00:04:32,725 --> 00:04:38,113
And it took it, it, it, he spent a number
of years in sort of mental institutions,

62
00:04:38,113 --> 00:04:42,570
homeless, Et cetera.
But in his work in Princeton in an area

63
00:04:42,570 --> 00:04:47,506
called of economics called, game theory.
He did something that was quite

64
00:04:47,506 --> 00:04:52,466
innovative, and it really revolutional,
revolutionized in many ways our

65
00:04:52,466 --> 00:04:57,211
understanding of economics.
And, and he sort of he, he got his

66
00:04:57,211 --> 00:05:00,976
schizophrenia under control in the mid
90s.

67
00:05:00,976 --> 00:05:06,333
And, and he was awarded the Noble Prize
for economics in 1994.

68
00:05:06,333 --> 00:05:13,207
So this is just kind of this moment where
this stuff, all this stuff was blossoming

69
00:05:13,207 --> 00:05:18,125
in the 40's and the 50's.
Now in the 1960's, we started seeing a

70
00:05:18,125 --> 00:05:23,645
different way of computing.
This was moving from the research into the

71
00:05:23,645 --> 00:05:29,504
mathematics of building computers to the
applications of the computers.

72
00:05:29,504 --> 00:05:35,234
And we needed to have connectivity because
you would be a computer and.

73
00:05:35,235 --> 00:05:40,742
You know in, in 1955 there might be one
computer available to a university

74
00:05:40,742 --> 00:05:46,682
researchers in the entire state, and so
you had to connect them together, and so

75
00:05:46,682 --> 00:05:53,072
we would often end up with, these things
we called terminals in our office and they

76
00:05:53,072 --> 00:05:57,227
would use these dial up modems and they
would connect.

77
00:05:57,227 --> 00:06:02,398
Perhaps for a local call to a local
computer, or even a long distance call, a

78
00:06:02,398 --> 00:06:05,996
very expensive long distance to a remote
computer.

79
00:06:05,996 --> 00:06:11,510
But these computers were so central and so
precious, that we didn't care about the

80
00:06:11,510 --> 00:06:17,182
cost of phones and we couldn't share them.
I mean we didn't, everybody didn't' have a

81
00:06:17,182 --> 00:06:21,922
computer they way they do today.
So there was a couple of different models.

82
00:06:21,922 --> 00:06:26,608
One is that you had people doing their
work connecting to computers over these

83
00:06:26,608 --> 00:06:29,668
modems.
And then more rarely, you had computer to

84
00:06:29,668 --> 00:06:33,316
computer connections using what are called
leased lines.

85
00:06:33,316 --> 00:06:38,267
These leased lines were very expensive.
They were kind of like making a long

86
00:06:38,267 --> 00:06:41,723
distance phone call 24 hours a day, 7 days
a week.

87
00:06:41,723 --> 00:06:46,858
They were rarely used in academic
situations because they were so expensive.

88
00:06:46,858 --> 00:06:51,984
It was more common for a bank to use them
to, say, move all their data from their

89
00:06:51,984 --> 00:06:57,766
branch locations to the central locations.
Once a day they were generally slow, and

90
00:06:57,766 --> 00:07:02,166
very expensive, and they were justifiable
in certain situations.

91
00:07:02,166 --> 00:07:07,398
And so, that's kind of how our world was,
we, we had something on our desk, and then

92
00:07:07,398 --> 00:07:12,390
we used that to connect through the phone
lines to a central computer that was

93
00:07:12,390 --> 00:07:17,338
shared with many different people, we
called it time share, and so, oops.

94
00:07:17,338 --> 00:07:23,119
So this next video that I want to show you
just the first part of it, you don't have

95
00:07:23,119 --> 00:07:27,837
to watch the whole thing.
Is kind of in the 60s in, and the, and 70s

96
00:07:27,837 --> 00:07:33,481
when I became involved in computing, this
was kind of the way that we perceived our

97
00:07:33,481 --> 00:07:36,383
computers.
You know, we would dial them up.

98
00:07:36,383 --> 00:07:41,501
And they made these clunking noises those
teletype that you're going to see in this

99
00:07:41,501 --> 00:07:44,629
video is a, is a world war two artifact
basically.

100
00:07:44,630 --> 00:07:49,563
And, and my first programming personally
was on this kind of a computer, making

101
00:07:49,563 --> 00:07:53,042
this exact noise.
Noise that your going to hear in this

102
00:07:53,042 --> 00:07:56,070
video.
And I think that the key to emphasize here

103
00:07:56,070 --> 00:08:00,870
is that you know, your it's kind of fun to
look at back at this guy with his horny

104
00:08:00,870 --> 00:08:04,081
rimmed glasses.
But, but we really were enjoying

105
00:08:04,081 --> 00:08:09,021
ourselves, and you think, well I got this
fancy cell phone and it does all these

106
00:08:09,021 --> 00:08:14,113
wonderful things, and I play Angry Birds
on it, and, and weren't these people not

107
00:08:14,113 --> 00:08:17,093
having fun?
And the answer is we were having a great

108
00:08:17,093 --> 00:08:19,363
time.
We were connecting, communicating,

109
00:08:19,363 --> 00:08:22,540
calculating, computing, doing all these
wonderful things.

110
00:08:22,540 --> 00:08:25,551
We just were doing it more slowly with
simpler equipment.

111
00:08:25,551 --> 00:08:29,773
But, but even from the beginning in the
sixties and the seventies, people talking

112
00:08:29,773 --> 00:08:33,226
to people were an important part in the
use of this technology.

113
00:08:33,226 --> 00:08:37,981
So take a quick look at this video and
then come on back.