Digital Computing Quotes

Computing technology started out as number-crunching.

Alan Turing gave us a mathematical model of digital computing that has completely withstood the test of time. He gave us a very, very clear description that was truly prophetic.

From the time I was 7, when I purchased my first calculator, I was fascinated by the idea of a machine that could compute things.

I have not proved that the universe is, in fact, a digital computer and that it's capable of performing universal computation, but it's plausible that it is.

Microprocessors were instantly attractive to us because you could build something for a fraction of the cost of conventional electronics. That's essentially what we did with the Traf-O-Data computer - only it was too narrow and challenging an area to try to build a service business in.

I am so old, I entered engineering school with a slide rule. And I left engineering school with a calculator. I can still use a slide rule but it's not a skill you especially need anymore.

Every disruptive innovation is powered by a simplifying technology, and then the technology has to get embedded in a different kind of a business model. The first two decades of digital computing were characterized by the huge mainframe computers that filled a whole room, and they had to be operated by PhD Computer Scientists. It took the engineers at IBM about four years to design these mainframe computers because there were no rules. It was an intuitive art and just by trial and error and experimentation they would evolve to a computer that worked.

A bit, the smallest unit of information, the fundamental particle of information theory, is a choice, yes or no, on or off. It's a choice that you can embody in electrical circuits, and it is thanks to that that we have all this ubiquitous computing.

The Fifties and Sixties were years of unreal optimism about weather forecasting. Newspapers and magazines were filled with hope for weather science, not just for prediction but for modification and control. Two technologies were maturing together: the digital computer and the space satellite.