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Computers in the future may...perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons. That's hardly a howler is it?! I see nothing suggesting that 1.5 tons is the endpoint or that we'll

Computers in the future may...perhaps only weigh 1.5 tons. That's hardly a howler is it?! I see nothing suggesting that 1.5 tons is the endpoint or that we'll be using heavy computers in The Year 2000. Will those people suggesting we'd one day have a supercomputer in our pockets be laughed at when we have microscopic omniputers floating around our then-useless brains?

mkr-hn 16y ago
The kind of computers Popular Science was thinking of in 1949 are what we call supercomputers today. They didn't have anything to distinguish it from, so "computer" was the only term to use. IBM's Watson is powered by 90 of these (according to the wiki): http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/750/index.html http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/750/index.html The datasheet says they weigh 120 pounds. 90 of those would be 10,800 pounds, or 5.4 tons. We're still a bit above the prediction, but I think Watson could be done in 1.5 tons of gear with some more development work focused on that. I'd need to see the Popular Science article, but I doubt they were envisioning a personal computer. They might have been envisioning a community computer though. 1.5 tons would probably be enough for that in terms of a shared file/message board/connectivity supercomputer for a city block's worth of people.
patrickk 16y ago
Professor Frink's (from The Simpsons) prediction on where computers would be in one hundred years: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE7mi-gdIYw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE7mi-gdIYw
- hasenj 16y ago
  One comment (on youtube) says this is from a radio show during the 40's; is "The Simpsons" that old?
  - kuk 16y ago
    No. That was from one of the episodes (recent, a few years ago) but I can't remember which episode.
joegaudet 16y ago
The reasoning here of course being that they had not yet discovered transistors (Though some work had been done in devices similar), and MOSFETs were still a long way out, so it was reasonable at this point to assume that computers of any variety would still be huge.

mkr-hn 16y ago

The kind of computers Popular Science was thinking of in 1949 are what we call supercomputers today. They didn't have anything to distinguish it from, so "computer" was the only term to use. IBM's Watson is powered by 90 of these (according to the wiki): http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/750/index.html http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/hardware/750/index.html The datasheet says they weigh 120 pounds. 90 of those would be 10,800 pounds, or 5.4 tons. We're still a bit above the prediction, but I think Watson could be done in 1.5 tons of gear with some more development work focused on that. I'd need to see the Popular Science article, but I doubt they were envisioning a personal computer. They might have been envisioning a community computer though. 1.5 tons would probably be enough for that in terms of a shared file/message board/connectivity supercomputer for a city block's worth of people.

patrickk 16y ago

Professor Frink's (from The Simpsons) prediction on where computers would be in one hundred years: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE7mi-gdIYw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE7mi-gdIYw

hasenj 16y ago
One comment (on youtube) says this is from a radio show during the 40's; is "The Simpsons" that old?
- kuk 16y ago
  No. That was from one of the episodes (recent, a few years ago) but I can't remember which episode.

joegaudet 16y ago

The reasoning here of course being that they had not yet discovered transistors (Though some work had been done in devices similar), and MOSFETs were still a long way out, so it was reasonable at this point to assume that computers of any variety would still be huge.