I ran across this old patent 3190554 of a digital computer that ran on compressed air. Was such a digital computer ever built and used for anything? How hard would it be to make such a air powered digital computer using 3D printing?
I guess so . The other/first patent is patent 3107850 by a 1960's teenager who then gave it to world ! It was slow even by 1960's standards so a non starter . Bummer that Babbage didn't stumble on to this and have the pipe organ guys build his Analytic engine for him, Then Lady Lovelace could have invented COBOL. ( I like saying that) Has there been a "break through " in Quantum Computing? Saw something on that yesterday. If N.S.A. already has a working secret "Q Computer" what do you thing they are doing with it ? Something like the secret Turing Machine in the 1940's was used to sink German subs?
Why is moore's law updated to suit todays computer? Back in 1965 he said transistors would double ever year (12 months) , a few years ago they said it was every 18 months, now there saying every 2 years (24 months). Seem to me Moore`s Law is wrong and out of date.
+CWWRavenbb Well Gordon Moore (founder of Intel) initially made an observation that the number of transistors was doubling every 12 months. After looking more closely they decided that it was probably more like 18 months so they went with that. But recently the upgrade cycles we've come to expect ARE indeed lagging behind in a way they never really have before. The reason is that functionally reliable transistors can only get so small -given the current silicon standard- before they become costly and unreliable to sustain. We are relatively close to that upper limit and it's been getting more and more difficult to significantly more performance using the miniaturization method.
+CWWRavenbb There are other versions of moore's law that still holds true, for example the one Ray kurzweil observed: The rate at which computing power (flops) per $1000 increases remains constant. (The number of calculations per second that you can buy $1000 doubles every two years.)
The technology is being held back on PURPOSE !!! The NSA in 2002 complained consumers have too much computing power. And since computing power has barely improved ! My i7 3770 or 4770 is only about 3 times faster than a Pentium 4 at 3GHz in 2002 for single core, single thread !!! WTF !!!!! And Intel had 1THz, yes 1000GHz process in 2001 to be sold in 2005 with 10,000x less leakage. It STILL isn't used 15 years later !!!! WTF !!! I would be very happy with a 90nm, Pentium 4 running at 1THz. It would bench at 333 times faster than a CPU today. If you compare the bench for the CPU and scale the clock speed. 3 times faster in 15 years, how sad is that, and never in history of computers until 2002. And Darpa, Motorola announced 1THz transistors since then too in about 2009 !!!! So where are they ? Why not even 10% of the speed ? 100GHz !!!! Or 1% of the speed, 10GHz ???? If they can do 1THz, 10% of that speed should be easy !
@@James-dn5gn Two years later... I hope you got through this dark period of your life by now, and got your mental health back. Man, the amount of nonsense you managed to fit in a couple of lines back then...
I personally think this talk is too high level and skips too many important parts. Neither I agree on all events he puts inside 'communication, simulation and embodiment' . I should probably read his book to judge better. But I've seen far better recapitulations and insights from computer history.
