On and Off
Whenever people try to do their impression of the late Pat Morita’s “Mr Miyagi”, they often use the old, “Wax on, Wax off” phrase, while making circular motions with both hands in front of them. I always chuckle when I hear that saying… then start thinking about a lesson that lies within second and last words… on and off. I guess that the real beginnings of computers, as we know them, could be said to have begun during WWII, a few years before I was born. These were large, crude machines powered by vacuum tubes, and generating a tremendous amount of heat. Yet, the most sophisticated of these behemoths possessed less computing capacity than today’s disposable hand held calculators. This is a story we all know. What I always remember, though, is that at the heart of the incredible things that today’s video games, pc’s, servers, mainframes and even the super number crunchers can do, is a simple principle…. On and Off.The reason that the computers of the 1940’s used vacuum tubes was that these lights would have two states at any given time, these would either be on or off. Multiplied by thousands of little tubes and using binary [...]