One tonne 'Baby' marks its birth

[Prrkitty]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7465115.stm

Quote: Sixty years ago the "modern computer" was born in a lab in Manchester.

The Small Scale Experimental Machine, or "Baby", was the first to contain memory which could store a program.

The room-sized computer's ability to carry out different tasks - without having to be rebuilt - has led some to describe it as the "first modern PC".

Using just 128 bytes of memory, it successfully ran its first set of instructions - to determine the highest factor of a number - on 21 June 1948.

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Computers have come a long way in the last 60+ years. We have a lot to be thankful for from the birth of this 'Baby'.

May the future advances that will be made keep on giving us just as much, if not more, than this one did.

[Trevelyan_06]

Out at work we have a couple of rooms that have removable floors. It's where computers like this use to be kept. Currently one of the rooms is a conference and the other holds the new computer network, which takes up about 1/5 of the room.

[Russ]

60 years. In a short 60 years, look how far we have come. Technology is amazing.

[Beldaran]

Technology gets its power from science, so science is what is amazing.

[Modus Ponens]

Oh, come on, Beldaran. If I said, "Chrono Trigger is cool," you wouldn't say, "Chrono Trigger was made by Squaresoft, so Square is what's amazing," you'd say, "hell yeah." Science is amazing, but technology is too.

[Beldaran]

Well, I pointed it out because I notice a lot of people love technology, but when it comes to larger issues (evolution) they are all suddenly skeptical of science's ability to produce real knowledge (but they are not skeptical of their amazing bibles.)

I think the fact that your computer functions and is such an amazing device provides a profound philosophical link between science and technology. Science is like a tree. Reason is the roots, Theories (such as gravity and evolution) form the trunk, and technology is the delicious fruit.

One should not gorge oneself on the delicious fruits of science, and yet express skepticism as to whether the trunk and the roots are real. I say that because there are people in this thread who have expressed skepticism (skepticism they don't seem to feel for anything else) that science is a legitimate mechanism for acquisition of knowledge.

By all means, praise technology... but acknowledge that you are praising the very science that is so often dismissed as too "rigid" and too "dogmatic" (irony???) by the religious right wing.

[Aegix Drakan]

*claps* Yay for the advance of technology. We've come a long wayfrom old school punchcards where it took a whole stak to do a simple 2 + 3 = 5 type thing.

Now, I'm going to go back to watching Zero Punctuation, and surfing the net, and jump ship from this topic before it gets de-railed again.


And while this next bit is relevant to Beldaran's post, it IS possibly off topic, so for those of you who don't want to sift through this wall of potential irrelevance, I'm putting it in a spoiler tag so I don't disrupt your posting.
-=SPOILER=-

[Russ]

That belief sounds somewhat like Theistic Evolution to me. The only difference is that God is replaced with Nature in your belief.

[Aegix Drakan]

That belief sounds somewhat like Theistic Evolution to me. The only difference is that God is replaced with Nature in your belief.

...thanks because, IMO, God = Nature. >_> and I could go on, but I don't want to de-rail this topic any further, or end up starting some kind of a flame war.