Guide to Computing
Computing Machines 1945-1990
“There was a time not so long ago when computers were not thin, stylish, devices you slip into a pocket or wear on your wrist, but enormous, fabulous machines with flashing lights and spinning fans. These behemoths filled rooms and captured imaginations with their promise of the future.
Docubyte’s ongoing series Guide To Computing is a love letter to the technology of yore. His bright, colorful photos bring a graphic look to computers from the 1940s to the 1980s and remind you of just how prescient Gordon Moore was. That MacBook in your bag or Nexus in your hand is the distant relative of the Harwell Dekatron that weighed 4,500 pounds and used punch tape.
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His delightful images present every dial, button and screen in exquisite detail. The computers in Guide to Computing are quaint—slow and stodgy by today’s standards—yet fascinating. They are the precursor to the machines so central to your life. Appreciate their importance, but also their beauty.”
Jenna Garret, Wired
“In the future, computers may weigh no more than 1.5 tonnes.”
Popular mechanics, 1949
“You’re a very impolite machine I must say…but he’s an awfully rapid calculator.”
CBS’ Charles Collingwood, Election Night, 1952
“…you had already stolen it!”
Bill Gates to Steve Jobs on their ‘collective borrowing’ from Xerox
“Never trust a computer you can’t throw out of a window”
Steve Wozniak
‘Select card reader and catch fire”
An enlightening software failure of the ICL 2900/7500 mainframe series , from ‘An ICL Anthology’, by Hamish Carmichael 1996
“Last week, Control Data … announced the 6600 system…I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world’s most powerful computer.”
IBM President, Tomas Watson, internal memo 1963
“When I was young, all we ever heard about was functionalism, functionalism, functionalism. It’s not enough. Design should also be sensual and exciting.”⠀
Ettore Sottsass, designer of the Olivetti Elea 9003
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
“IBM brings you a new concept in general purpose accounting. Look at it go!”
Dan Hillyard, IBM 1401 Promotional Film, 1959
“We are going to take a good, fat loss on Stretch…If we get enough orders at this price, we could go out of business…”
Thomas Watson, president of IBM. Ultimately IBM sold 9 units, the project going down in computing folklore as a spectacular failure
“Going to work for the Eclipse Group could be a rough way to start out in your profession.”
The Soul of a New Machine, Tracey Kidder, 1981
“We wanted to let the machine speak for itself.”
Connection Machine designer, Tamiko Thiel