Name: The birth of the computer
Uploaded: 2008-06-15T20:58:00Z
Duration: 17 min 5 s
Description: Historian George Dyson tells stories from the birth of the modern computer -- from its 17th-century origins to the hilarious notebooks of some early computer engineers.

Historian George Dyson tells stories from the birth of the modern computer -- from its 17th-century origins to the hilarious notebooks of some early computer engineers.

The birth of the computer

Digital computing emerged from a unique mix of wartime urgency, visionary thinkers, and hands-on engineers. The first machines, built with vacuum tubes and cathode ray memory, ran bomb calculations and inspired dreams of artificial life. Early programmers, including pioneering women coders, worked through endless errors and quirky mishaps, sometimes recording the fate of mice and bugs in their logbooks. The architecture they invented now shapes a world where code does more than calculate—it evolves, interacts, and even merges with biology.