The Discovery Channel hosted by David Hartley (Good Morning AM former host) presented a fascinating show of the advent of computers from the earliest gear driven adding machines that were the size of about 4 22 cu' refrigerators. Since they re-run such programming on cable, maybe you can still find it and view it in your area.
Then,
by the 50's we had reduced them to a single computer taking up the equivalent cubic space of a filled floor to ceiling High School Gymnasium to hold all the wiring, racks, tubes, power supplies, knobs, lights, human interfaces, etc., etc., etc.
Thus, saving 2 digits is more than just a pica character width on a typewriter.
FOR EXAMPLE...
in the binary code system, (and I'm SURE someone will come along and give the correct 0I code) just to create the numeral 1
in an 8 bit system meant it took 8 columns to do so.
Here's what I mean.
Computers are basically switches, okay? They only know Off and On,
which is represented by a 0 which equals OFF, and I which equals ON
Therefore,
in an 8 bit/column if you please system
the numeral 1
might be represented in the following code string:
0000001
the number 2
0000010
and so on.
Therefore, by the time you got to 99 you would have used all the possible combinations of these 8 bytes/columns.
Have I lost you so far?
Now if each column was physically represented in cubic dimensions the size of say 2 22cu' refigerations, can you imagine how many more "refigerator sized dimensions" you would require to get a number into the 100's let alone the 1000's let alone the 2000's?
Miniaturization/via advent of transistorization "shrunk the referigerators" (<---pardon the pun, Rick Moranis), but it just didn't occur to "them"--the inventors of transistors--to incorporate the 4 digit solution at that juncture.
Now to add to the confusion...
we are now leaving 16 byte/columns of O's and I's systems
and are now in the 32 byte/columns of O's and I's systems
a/w/a 64 byte systems.
I sure hope this helps. |
