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Adam Munich

Tue Jan 25 2011, 05:17AM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

I love how people imagined the future in the past, and how the perceptions have changed.

Videotelephony in 2000, as imagined in 1910.

1295932280 2893 FT0 Video Telephony As Imagined In 19101

2010 as imagined in the 50's.

Maglev as imagined in 1938

PDA's in 1943

2055 Imagined

Will we have loggers in 1958?

I've got a bunch of these, but I'm sleepy.

Patrick

Tue Jan 25 2011, 06:10AM

Registered Member #2431 Joined: Tue Oct 13 2009, 09:47PM
Location: Chico, CA. USA
Posts: 5639

I like the 4-tube notebook.... lol!

Conundrum

Tue Jan 25 2011, 06:43AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

You may laugh, but there were plans for thermionic "integrated circuits" back then.
the plan was to use a single large heater and arrays of cathodes, grids and anodes hooked up inside the glass to minimise the number of external interconnects.
Had semiconductors not been as easy to make then this might have become the standard.

Certainly thermionics are more than fast enough for basic tasks, so a "4 tube" notebook where one tube just handles serial program/data memory, another does serial processing, a third acts as the clock and obviously a CRT and its driver tube(s) with some of the CRT's blank space being used as a random access memory and the CRT driver being used as the system clock.

see

-A

Ash Small

Tue Jan 25 2011, 07:00AM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245

The first programmable computer had 4,050 valves:

Bjørn

Tue Jan 25 2011, 08:16AM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

The first programmable computer had 2000 relays.

Ash Small

Tue Jan 25 2011, 09:24AM

Registered Member #3414 Joined: Sun Nov 14 2010, 05:05PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4245

It looks like you are correct, Bjorn.

"In 1936, mathematician Alan Turing published a definition of a theoretical "universal computing machine", a computer which held its program on tape, along with the data being worked on. Turing proved that such a machine was capable of solving any conceivable mathematical problem for which an algorithm could be written.[3] During the 1940s, Turing and others such as Konrad Zuse developed the idea of using the computer's own memory to hold both the program and data, instead of tape,[4] but it was mathematician John von Neumann who became widely credited with defining that stored-program computer architecture, on which the Manchester Mark 1 was based.

The practical construction of a von Neumann computer depended on the availability of a suitable memory device. The University of Manchester's Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), the world's first stored-program computer, had successfully demonstrated the practicality of the stored-program approach and of the Williams tube, an early form of computer memory based on a standard cathode ray tube (CRT), by running its first program in June 1948"

(From the article I linked to above)

EDIT: Although this is from the article you linked to:

"The Manchester Baby of 1948 and the EDSAC of 1949 were the world's first computers with internally stored programs. They implemented a concept frequently (but erroneously) attributed to a 1945 paper of John von Neumann and colleagues. Von Neumann's own papers give proper credit to Alan Turing, and the concept had actually been mentioned earlier by Konrad Zuse himself, in a 1936 patent application (which was rejected)."

EDIT 2: Zuse's machine stored the program on film, not in the computer. As such, it wasn't programmable in the modern sense. IE it didn't store it's own program in it's memory. I should have made this clearer in my initial post.

Steve Conner

Tue Jan 25 2011, 09:49AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Grenadier wrote ...

2010 as imagined in the 50's.

I don't know about the others, but the house of 2010 looks remarkably like Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater", built in 1937.

Another case of people assuming the future would be just like the past except more so.

As for the Zuse vs. Manchester debate, let's just call it "World's first working computer not destroyed by Allied bombing."

Proud Mary

Tue Jan 25 2011, 10:16AM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition 1956

House of the Future

1295950352 543 FT0 Ideal Home Home Of The Future 1

The idea that Future Woman might not want to be responsible for a food warming trolley with infra-red griller doesn't seem to have occurred to the exhibition's curators in 1956.

Adam Munich

Tue Jan 25 2011, 03:30PM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

Power broadcast via UV beams. Clever concept, 1920.

Wind power of the future, 19??

1295969033 2893 FT107096 Giant Turbine01

Solar of the future, August 19??.

Shopping via TV 19??

Churchill's imagined 1982.

HV Enthusiast

Tue Jan 25 2011, 03:52PM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

Most of the predictions actually are pretty close to the technology we have now.

However, the one thing that they always get wrong is the cars. They just never seem to get a good prediction on what the car of tomorrow will look like.

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