Iconic Video about the birth of basic

[JonW]

Take a look at this: the genius in the time-sharing is astounding, remote login and the creation of the original compiler.  Simply stunning engineering

This is another amazing video.  I have heard this talked about but never in this depth.  The manual work is mind-blowing, and that memory...

[John Lawton]

Oh my, that takes me back a long time to using a teletype and a phone handset pushed into an acoustic coupler, just like they showed, in my case connecting to the local IBM computer at a local technical college in Cambridge. Source code was in BASIC of course, typed out offline onto a paper tape then uploaded to run.

I liked the remark that BASIC was "Not quite as good as FORTRAN". That was my impression too. I started computing at my secondary school with FORTRAN and punched cards that had to be sent away for processing and a load of printout arrived back some days later. Things are a bit easier these days

John

[flosigud]

Americans invented the transistor, op amp, logic and then computers and and then...

[John Lawton]

Not so fast. It's a hot potato, who invented the first computer. It depends on what you mean by computer:

https://www.collegesearch.in/articles/first-computer-in-the-world#:~:text=Charles%20Babbage%20created%20the%20first,computer%22%20in%20the%20world%20(1973)

[JonW]

To be specific, Americans did not invent all of these,  they were merely developed in America. At that time many of the physicists and mathematicians working on the first principles we're actually from this side of the pond.

[trastikata]

Thank you for sharing, it was really interesting to watch.

Here's my favourite old science movie about analog computing ever since I was told how the micrometer works  .

[Fanie]

The technology comes from aliens.  If that did not happen, we most likely would not have this conversation.  Easy to explain, technology develops much faster than humans do.

On my first real PC, (after the Commadore) I used Tango PCB (ran under DOS), and my first pics had to be UV erased to program them again.  Took about 10 to 15 minutes before you can program the pic again.  Code was in assembler.