Authored by: lnuss on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 09:27 AM EDT |
Most people don't think of it that way, but the telephone network of the Bell
System after direct dialing came along (much/most of it electromechanical,
depending on the time frame that you consider) was one gigantic computer, made
up of central office switching machines all over the country (world, actually,
once international calling became common). One switching machine I worked on
took up a couple of floors of around an acre each, and there were thousands (not
all so large) around the U.S.
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Larry N.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: JamesK on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 11:03 AM EDT |
All those vacuum tubes bring real meaning to the term "hot
standby".
BTW, many years ago, I worked on a vacuum tube "computer",
built by Teleregister, located in the Toronto Stock Exchange. My first task in
the morning was to start it up. The first step was to use a variable transformer
to gradually bring up the filament voltage. Then after a few minutes, I'd fire
up a motor/generator set to produce the high voltage (+- 130V DC).
Teleregister Magnetronic Bid-Asked Stock Quotation
System--- The following program contains immature subject matter.
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Authored by: JamesK on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 11:24 AM EDT |
Several years ago, I read a book "IBM's Early Computers" that
described some of the things that went into SAGE. One item I recall from that
book was how IBM gave up on working with ceramics manufacturers and developed
the material used in ferrite cores in house. It seems the ceramics
manufacturers couldn't produce it pure enough.
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The following program contains immature subject matter.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 29 2013 @ 04:30 PM EDT |
Where did Life get the pic of the CRT? With the Chinese
characters?
Google-image has one copy credited to
extremetech.com 1 day ago. But
motherboard.vice.com has a large
wall mounted display
of part of the same coastline ...[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: tiger99 on Sunday, March 31 2013 @ 05:17 AM EDT |
.... a Raspberry Pi is about 1000 times more powerful (speed and memory), and
uses about 600,000 times less power. Due to inflation, I can't easily make a
cost comparison, but would guess maybe 10 to 100 million times cheaper? Can't be
bothered to work out the size and weight improvements, as I can't find the
weight of the Pi right now (anyway, dominated by the wall wart and case, if
used), but guessing factors of millions again. If only the same amount of
development effort that went into computers had gone into other vital issues
such as food, pollution and health..... [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 01 2013 @ 05:21 PM EDT |
Considering all those tubes, I wonder what the actual up-time
was?
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