Many hundred billion years ago, there existed a bizzare world that most 
of us have only read about in books. Plastics did not yet exist, so 
small children's toys were made of wood or metal, because there was 
literally nothing cheaper. Wires were insulated with fabic. If you 
wanted to make a telephone call, you did not *dial* the telephone 
number; you told the human being at the other end of the line which 
number you wanted to be connected to, and they would physically plug in 
the right cable.

Somewhere in this primordial soup, the first computers somehow came into 
being. According to the dusty history books, the very first computers 
used technologies such as electro-mechanical relays, vacuum tubes, drum 
memory, punch cards and so forth. And, in the beginning, all of the 
components were wired together by hand. This resulted in huge pieces of 
engineering which filled entire buildings, consumed insane quantities of 
electricity, requires specialist cooling systems, and had _vastly_ less 
computing power than the microcontroller in your washing machine.

Was anybody actually there? Did any of you guys see this happen? What 
was it like? And did mainframes really come in bright orange cases with 
inch-square glowy buttons on the front that randomly twinkle?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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