This past summer, during an extended stay in California, I took a trip to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, with my sister and nieces. We didn’t really know what to expect. But we were pleasantly surprised at how endlessly fascinating the history of computers and computing is.
This history may seem all technology and numbers and science and math. And not a shred of creativity involved. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Creativity abounds in all steps and aspects of the history of the computer. From design to use.
Of course in our 21st century lives, there is no way of getting around the computer. We all walk around with one in our pocket— calling it a phone. But it does so much more than that. And it started with a giant machine that took up rooms of space and was used to solve complicated math equations. Back then, people couldn’t comprehend any other uses for these machines. But slowly, (actually, rather fast) through much creative iteration, people began to create and devise and dream up new uses for the computer. New programs for the computer. They became smaller and smaller. Faster and faster. More useful. More ingrained in every aspect of our lives.
Where would we be without the creativity of those initial folks? (I know, for all of technologies benefits, there are a myriad of ways we complain about it, and think life was simpler in the before times. I’m one of these people. But that is not was this post is about.)
Developing the computer— in all it’s iterations— took an incredible amount of creativity, and dreaming up new worlds and possibilities.
So what will you dream up?
Click here for a fun video of the IBM 1401 computer first introduced in 1959. The last one was delivered in 1971.