Why The First Computers Were Made Out Of Light Bulbs

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Lightbulbs might be the best idea ever - just not for light. Head to brilliant.org/veritasium to start your free 30-day trial, and the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription.
A huge thanks to David Lovett for showing me his awesome relay and vacuum tube based computers. Check out his JPvid channel @UsagiElectric
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References:
Herring, C., & Nichols, M. H. (1949). Thermionic emission. Reviews of modern physics, 21(2), 185. - ve42.co/Herring1949
Goldstine, H. H., & Goldstine, A. (1946). The electronic numerical integrator and computer (eniac). Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation, 2(15), 97-110. - ve42.co/ENIAC
Shannon, C. E. (1938). A symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits. Electrical Engineering, 57(12), 713-723. - ve42.co/Shannon38
Boole, G. (1847). The mathematical analysis of logic. Philosophical Library. - ve42.co/Boole1847
The world’s first general purpose computer turns 75 - ve42.co/ENIAC2
Dylla, H. F., & Corneliussen, S. T. (2005). John Ambrose Fleming and the beginning of electronics. Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films, 23(4), 1244-1251. - ve42.co/Dylla2005
Stibitz, G. R. (1980). Early computers. In A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century (pp. 479-483). Academic Press.
ENIAC’s Hydrogen Bomb Calculations - ve42.co/ENIAC3
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Special thanks to our Patreon supporters:
Emil Abu Milad, Tj Steyn, meg noah, Bernard McGee, KeyWestr, Amadeo Bee, TTST, Balkrishna Heroor, John H. Austin, Jr., john kiehl, Anton Ragin, Benedikt Heinen, Diffbot, Gnare, Dave Kircher, Burt Humburg, Blake Byers, Evgeny Skvortsov, Meekay, Bill Linder, Paul Peijzel, Josh Hibschman, Mac Malkawi, Juan Benet, Ubiquity Ventures, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Stephen Wilcox, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Michael Krugman, Cy ‘kkm’ K’Nelson, Sam Lutfi.
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Written by Petr Lebedev, Derek Muller and Kovi Rose
Edited by Trenton Oliver
Animated by Mike Radjabov, Ivy Tello and Fabio Albertelli
Filmed by Derek Muller & Raquel Nuno
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images & Pond5
Music from Epidemic Sound
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, & Emily Zhang
Thumbnail by Ignat Berbeci

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2023/10/03

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Uio Uio 4 ヶ月前

Light bulbs were such a good idea, they became the symbol for good ideas

Geo Querry 4 ヶ月前

🤣🤣🤣 that's cool

Rory 4 ヶ月前

Galaxy brain comment

Yuan Wang 4 ヶ月前

here before 10k likes

Titus Kuhns 4 ヶ月前

💡

Noname 4 ヶ月前

Copied comment

Taylor Brown 4 ヶ月前

As a guy who majored in computer science, I gotta say this is one of the coolest videos I've seen in the JPvid science community in a while. I never made the connection between lightbulbs and the invention of vacuum tube based machines. Thank you Derek for putting together this amazing narrative for the fundamental turning point of electronic computer history!

TheSpaceJedi 4 ヶ月前

A little odd that they didn't teach you this in computer science

Kintama’s 銀魂 4 ヶ月前

@TheSpaceJedi eh, I think they just teach it to electrical engineers probably. They probably want more Software Engineers than Computer Scientists, so things like understanding the nitty gritty gets tossed aside (or I just haven't taken the relevant course. There is a course called digital circuits that I think I'm supposed to take.)

John Pisello 3 ヶ月前

@Kintama’s 銀魂 Well, I _did_ take Digital Circuits (back in 1987), and we didn't learn about vacuum tubes (though we learned about transistors).

Kintama’s 銀魂 3 ヶ月前

@John Pisello oh transistors are covered? That’s good. I’ve been trying to learn about them/read up on them, and it’s been slow going. The only thing I know so far is that there are numerous kinds of transistors. So far, my understanding is that for turning off a transistor maybe the middle portion of the transistor gets a counterbalance of voltage to make it so that no difference of voltage exists for a current to run across the transistor. Is this the case? That would mean keeping a transistor off would actually cost energy. Do transistors have a capacitor be the key to whether they’re switched on or off? To switch them off the part behind the dielectric (of air or maybe silicon) would be made into whatever charge so that no difference of voltage exists for a current to flow across. And when they want it to turn on then they make a difference appear by change the charge.

Bakke Clerens 2 ヶ月前

I felt exacly the same way

CrippledMerc 4 ヶ月前

This makes me think about the people who built calculators and computers in Minecraft using the in-game “electricity” system called Redstone. It started as just making switches that could automatically open doors when you hit a button or stepped on a pressure plate to trigger it, but it eventually grew into more and more complicated electric systems until people eventually built calculators and even computers in the game. I remember seeing a video where someone built a computer in Minecraft that was running Minecraft itself in a scaled down version, on a screen made of Minecraft blocks. Someone even built a computer that was able to connect to the internet and they were able to order a pizza through the game that then was delivered to their house. I’m sure by now people have built huge and even more complex computing systems in the game and I have no idea what their capabilities even are at this point.

MacOS 3 ヶ月前

the pizza thing was a mod called web displays. you cant connect to the internet using minecraft redstone

CrippledMerc 3 ヶ月前

@MacOS I’m aware they can’t connect directly to the internet through in-game stuff alone, but they still had to build the thing in the game to interface with it.

MacOS 3 ヶ月前

@CrippledMerc it was just a portal frame thing, it was just like lighting a nether portal, the mod was what did the web browser

CrippledMerc 3 ヶ月前

@MacOS Pretty sure in the video I saw years ago they built a computer in game that used the mod to show the web browser and connect to the internet.

Tom Lewis 3 ヶ月前

😮🤯😳

Darren Gedye 4 ヶ月前

I was born in 1968. My mother was a Comptometer operator ( a mechanical adding machine), and my father was mad about electronics. I grew up surrounded by vacuum tubes, but I don't think I really understood them until watching this video! Thank you for your amazing content.

Un Named Channel 3 ヶ月前

Your mother was a mechanical adding machine ?

Darren Gedye 3 ヶ月前

@unnamedchannel1237 I suppose that is a _possible_ interpretation of my statement. Another slightly more _plausible_ interpretation is that she was the *operator* of a mechanical adding machine.

Shamak 12 日前

I was also born in 1968. Specifically November 17. My dad first bought our (my) first computer on my 13th birthday. AI will be for STEM geeks in 2023 what BASIC was to computer geeks in 1981.

meep_ferret 2 日前

My mom's best friend was also a Comptometer operator for Bacardi. That helped them get hotel rooms in Puerto Rico when others were turned away!

Jake Maynard 2 ヶ月前

Dude, I’ve watched so many of your videos, and you are one of my absolute favorite channels on JPvid. Your team does such an amazing job between research, writing, producing, editing, etc… Veritasium makes GREAT content! Please keep doing what you’re doing! Thanks!

The editor ヶ月前

Nice

David Faraday 3 ヶ月前

I'm disappointed that you made no mention of Colossus. It may not have been a programmable computer, but it was an electronic logic machine that used thousands of vacuum tubes to statistically analyse encrypted teleprinter messages at a very high speed. It came into service a whole year before Eniac and it made a very significant contribution to the success of the invasion of occupied France in June 1944.

Paul Le Mars 3 ヶ月前

It was programmable.

David Faraday 3 ヶ月前

@Paul Le Mars It was a special-purpose machine built to do one job and one job only.

Kelly126 2 ヶ月前

Im very glad someone has mentioned colossus as i feel alot of history is "america washed" which is quite upsetting to see.

Gus Shryack 2 ヶ月前

Atanasoff-Berry computer out-dates them both

David Faraday 2 ヶ月前

@Gus Shryack Thanks for drawing my attention to this, I'd not hears of it before.

Jon Lusk 4 ヶ月前

As a Computer Engineer, I would like to thank you for illuminating the origins of my profession. This was an exceptional, historical documentary.

den 4 ヶ月前

You’re welcome

dead channel 4 ヶ月前

Eyyyy illuminating! I get the joke! HAHAHA

Frost Family 4 ヶ月前

What would also be illuminating is if you explain the quantum physics of transistors and maybe even laser keyboards!

Anik Samiur Rahman 4 ヶ月前

I, personally think, a better origin of computer and automation can be found in Looms, specially Jaquered looms. And I'll also advise u to not take Veritassium seriously. I mean not even as a good entertainment.

Jon Lusk 4 ヶ月前

@Frost Family It doesn't take quantum physics to explain the operation of a transistor. Someone well-versed in quantum physics might have something to add to the conversation, but the operation is currently well understood.

Tow Bar 3 ヶ月前

I found it fascinating back in the early 2000s when I worked on C-130 aircraft that still utilized vacuum tubes in the compass amplifiers for the navigation system. Your explanation of how they amplify signals, like earth's magnetic field, helped close the gap on my understanding of that navigation system. Those airplanes used a device called a Magnetic Azimuth Detector in the wing tips or in the top of the vertical stabilizer to sense magnetic heading and transmitted a very low voltage signal to the navigation computers for heading reference. Before the signal could be utilized effectively, though, it had to be amplified. Enter the humble light bulb 💡

38911bytefree 3 ヶ月前

Some FM transmite still using 1KW tubes as output. Tubes still good on RF applications.

Rich Vandervecken 3 ヶ月前

The first production C-130A came off the production line in 1955. I know they have had several upgrades to the airframe and systems over the years but it still amazes me that a plane designed and built in the 1950's is still in service today. The B-52 is another plane that still in service that was first built in the 1950's. I worked in PMEL witch was renamed TMDE when I was in the U.S.A.F. and I was shocked by how many pieces of test equipment we had in Germany that were built in the 1950's and 1960's and used vacuum tubes and all the wires used silver solder on ceramic bus strips for connection points. I was over there from 1982 to 1984. I was surprised when the government decided to make all the military calibration labs totally civilian contractor jobs in the 1990's.

Eric Gerlach 2 ヶ月前

I loved this video. I didn't know half of what you taught about the history of the triode. My one complaint is that the British Colossus Mark I predated ENIAC by 2 years, though it was kept classified for another 50+ so it isn't as widely known. Would love to see a video from you about Enigma, Colossus, and all the math and science that went into WWII codebreaking.

Tristan Cleveland 2 ヶ月前

Yes! Please a video on WWII codebreaking and how it led to the invention of the computer!

Lidiane Monteiro ヶ月前

Simon Grimmett 23 日前

Please, would love to see that!

Paul Frederick 9 日前

Colossus could only perform one task. It was not a general purpose programmable computer. The Brits certainly understood the theory of computers. They were just too bloody poor to actually build one. Which is why the Americans were first.

Wellington Anderson 3 ヶ月前

As a computer nerd, this video is fascinating and beautiful. I love how I could see the connection from a light bulb to a primative version of binary code with how numbers where calculated and displayed through boolean logic

Hydra Ali7 3 ヶ月前

I am full heartedly waiting for part 2 ❤ such a nice video explaining a lot in just 18 mins, What a context and way of explaining and how much one could understand and gain knowledge from these 18 mins instead of watching brain rotting reels, I have been searching for such a video on this topic from a long time. I can write a book on this but I don't got time and no one got to care 😊

Marcelo Rodrigues 3 ヶ月前

There are several great JPvid channels, but Veritasium always - and I mean ALWAYS - delivers! It is amazing how he can make videos of such different subjects, and are always on point! Never dull, never stretched out, never compromising. A real gem this channel.

charliecarrot 4 ヶ月前

I've lived my whole life hearing about vacuum tubes and never really knowing how they work. This was an amazing presentation connecting lightbulbs to transistors. I'm stunned.

Simon Henry 4 ヶ月前

Everyone understands mechanical computers, then school skips vacuum tubes because we don't use them anymore, and jumps to digital circuits, honestly if I had this video I would prob have got digiy

Follower of Pooh 4 ヶ月前

@Simon Henry Agreed. I know vacuum tubes was the predecessor of the transistor and functioned very similarly, but never know how it works.

Derrick James 4 ヶ月前

If you've ever gotten into guitar amps, you'll still hear people say that tube amps sound warmer. Still plenty of people using tubes. Tubes are still often the best way to amplify very high wattage radio signals.

Abhishek Kushwaha 4 ヶ月前

I think if you really want to understand something well, just start from its origin.. go to its history.

Sins 4 ヶ月前

@Abhishek Kushwaha Truly outstanding point! Personally found this method of finding out 'how or why was this thing invented in the first place?' really great approach to learning many new topics!

Optimus Maximus 4 ヶ月前

Just love your videos - you have a knack of distilling the most complex things down with easy-to-understand concepts and articulating ideas with clear, concise language that everyone can understand.

Joao Tragtenberg 4 ヶ月前

Congratulations for having such a talent on making complex things look and sound simple and joyful to watch! You are a great story teller!

fisao 3 ヶ月前

Absolument incroyable la manière dont vous avez réussi à condenser cette évolution complexe en une vidéo de moins de 20 minutes. Merci beaucoup, vous contribuez magnifiquement à enrichir nos connaissances avec chacune de vos contributions

Daniele Ascione 3 ヶ月前

Translation: Absolutely incredible the way you managed to condense such a complex evolution in a video less than 20 minutes long. Thank you so much, you contribute beautifully to enriching our knowledge with each one of your contributions.

Jeordie White 4 ヶ月前

That was pretty cool to see UsagiElectric featured in this. His videos are pretty awesome and I am glad I discovered his channel awhile back. He is brilliant and has a lot of fascinating videos. Glad he was getting some well deserved praise and attention from this video.

Paul Heller 2 ヶ月前

Very well done. As someone totally interested in vacuum tubes, radios and computers, you linked it all together in a way that my family can understand. I look forward to the next part, where you connect it to semiconductors and transistors (fingers crossed)!

Soul-Burn 4 ヶ月前

Interesting trivia: The first "computer bug" was a literal moth stuck in a relay in one of these relay calculators!

Dont_Enter_My_Profile_ 4 ヶ月前

Don't read my name!...

Bartok 4 ヶ月前

I've waited for the moment that this fact gets dropped in this video! Thx for mentioning :D

Recursive Triforce 4 ヶ月前

Nope. That's most likely myth. Research it! The name was probably around earlier. But the moth incident is most likely real.

Kealer Adecal 4 ヶ月前

It was grace gopper, and coined this malfunction as bug

David Davidson 4 ヶ月前

The term was around before computers were a thing. It had to do with buzzing interference noises on phone lines which sounded like buzzing insects. Debugging referred to fixing the interference.

Christian T 2 ヶ月前

As an electrical engineer I love these videos. And this video explained early versions of processors or calculators so well and interesting. I can’t wait for the video on the modern silicon electronics that I work with and have become so hard to learn.

0z3k 4 ヶ月前

Both the subject and it's presentation were amazing. Very high quality content. Thank you

Tyler Bradshaw 4 ヶ月前

I love your videos;I complely geeked out and lost track of time watching this one. A a mechanical engineer, I was aware of most of the technologies by themselves, but the way you put it all into a chronologically order and narratived the key milestones of what lead to what made for a very interesting story.

joseph prosser 3 ヶ月前

Great video crammed with interesting information. During the war a top secret project was pursued by the U.K. to develop an electronic code breaking machine called the Colossus. Ten of the twelve ordered Mk2 machines were completed and used successfully until the end of the war. At wars end these machines were destroyed and the project was kept secret for over thirty years. The last two Colossi machines (11 and 12) were shipped to GCHQ for secret work after the War. These machines were some ways many years ahead of the ENIAC computer. .

Fire Fly 4 ヶ月前

Seeing the history behind my discrete math and computational logic course make this extremely enjoyable for me to watch. Its very interesting to see how the pioneers came up with this idea, which I have the privilege to study.

Kedo 4 ヶ月前

Seeing the progress of computers laid out in a timeline is one of the most fascinating things to me. I've probably seen/ read the story about a dozen times and it's still interesting

ToyKeeper 4 ヶ月前

... and now we have ten-cent chips which are more powerful than the computer they used to reach the moon, and they're inside every cheap little thing. The keyboard I'm typing on has significantly more computing power than the Apollo Guidance Computer, and even my flashlight is roughly on par and gets regular firmware updates.

Akshat Gour 4 ヶ月前

Just realized that even I too feel the same!

Max Lee 4 ヶ月前

@ToyKeeper why the heavens does a flashlight need to be a connected device?

Shankz 4 ヶ月前

Did you not think it odd that neither Babbage nor Turing were mentioned at all?

Milos 4 ヶ月前

@Max Lee We have smart trash cans, so why not :). I think those flashlights have a camera also, so you can snap photos of your cellar while you are illuminating. And wherever photos and storage are, wifi comes naturally.

Anton Nym 4 ヶ月前

This is a very nice documentary and the explanation is great for us amateurs. Awesome that you hosted an appearance by David from Usagi Electric! He is definitely a steely-eyed missile man! All good wishes.

Lord R 26 日前

i remember researching this in high school and while i didn't have the documentation show this connection between lightbulbs and vacuum tubes back then, i did see the similarities and wonder. i think it's even crazier to think that 'computers' used to just be people really good at math as a profession.🤯

Stuff Universe 4 ヶ月前

Long time fan here. This is the not only one of your best videos. I’m nearly certain it’s one of the best in the educational genre. You sir are a gentleman & scholar.

Stefan Jensen 3 ヶ月前

always found early breadboards extremely fascinating. as someone who repairs electrical devices daily, and is used to circuit boards, i really appreciate all the work that went into old circuitry with vacuum tubes, and electromechanical engineering, the best days are the days i get a old appliance from before i was even thought of.

theacp127 27 日前

I'm studying Boolean algebra in college right now so it's really cool to see where it all started. Being able to take a few grids if 1s and 0s and turn them into complicated logic circuits that can do math and solve automation problems is really cool. I've learned how to develop for FPGA chips which can be modified like a programmable circuit.

Vivek Mishra 4 ヶ月前

I am surprised that this video is free. You explain it so well. Loved the explanation. I hope you keep making these videos and make us fall in love with science everytime

Skunk War 4 ヶ月前

I remember when my dad taught me how to make a rectifier diode. I thought this is magic and this is what got me interested in low voltage electronics. Love the video.

william howard 2 ヶ月前

My father had an electronic shop back in the '70s and I would assist him in going to houses and doing in home television repairs. We had a tube tester that allowed you to put in the tube number and it would tell you if it was good or bad. We also had a television picture to rejuvenator which he did the picture to filaments up burning off any buildup. It always amazes me the amount of heat that came off these things. You didn't awesome job of presenting this by the way!

Siva Venkatesh 4 ヶ月前

I've heard about vacuum tubes, never thought it was a successor of light bulb. The evolution is so amazing and the way it is articulated in the video is so interesting and shows a lots of work had put into this video. Thank you Derek.

Ihsan Topcu ヶ月前

This is literally a whole semester of computer science class in one video! Thanks!

miinyoo 4 ヶ月前

I have to give mad props to your editor/animator(s). They do such a tremendous job distilling your scripts into visual language even though we all know none of this is actually classical mechanics at its roots. The classicality of it is emergent and the art style helps with that even though it is not explicitly said.

Tarzan 4 ヶ月前

OK tHERE Mr critique

Repent and believe in Jesus Christ 4 ヶ月前

Repent to Jesus Christ “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” ‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭1‬:‭17‬ ‭NIV‬‬ Y

Archimedus 4 ヶ月前

@Repent and believe in Jesus Christ Bad bot...

Kyuubey0406 4 ヶ月前

@Repent and believe in Jesus Christ goku solos

Thr33D3vil 4 ヶ月前

Speaking of, let me know if that water drop bit IS in fact morse code, or am I loosing my mind.

Xuân Sơn Vũ ヶ月前

As an IC design engineer, thank you for explaining in detail how digital circuits were invented and the implementation in the earlyday

Broghai 3 ヶ月前

This is an insanely interesting and very understandable about how humans got to the incredible computing power we have today based off of such simple principles. You guys did such a great job on this video.

GinGaming_GG ヶ月前

I don't know how I took so long to find this channel, but this is definitely worthy of my time. Thanks for breaking these things down into a simple but fun way.

MarkS 4 ヶ月前

It's really fascinating to see how the evolution of the now ubiquitous transistor came about. These devices are everywhere but I didn't realise the origins went so far back. Looking forward to the follow-up to this.

Clinton D'souza 27 日前

Yeah. They literally replicated the exact workings of the vaccum tubes in a tiny chip. Amazing!!

Labtastic 2 ヶ月前

Hi! You said that ENIAC could be programmed. I'd love to hear how this was achieved at the time. I think this would require a method to automatically change the "wiring" of the triodes inside the computer.

Prasanna Mestha 4 ヶ月前

Mad props to Veritassium for explaining such a complex subject in such a simplified manner. Brilliant!

Justin Golden 4 ヶ月前

Every. Single. Time.

den 4 ヶ月前

You’re welcome

Unnikrishnan V R 4 ヶ月前

@Justin Golden Oh hey! Its moist critical

Ryan Schlesinger 4 ヶ月前

.org!

Hydra Ali7 3 ヶ月前

Ikr

M.F.H. Dutton 4 ヶ月前

Never in all my years have I learned about electronics in such an easy and simplistic manner as did this video show me. Thank you Veritasium

Boomerino Kripperino 4 ヶ月前

I made a PowerPoint during my senior year crediting Claude Shannon for the start of digital age by drawing the parallel of Boolean Logic with electrical circuits! Feels great to have it shown here!

Fadz Bobby 4 ヶ月前

as a software engineer, this is absolutely amaze me. i learn embedded programming once, never thought of appreciate it until now

Spince 4 ヶ月前

I cannot express with words how much I needed to see all these things put in context that teachers and mentors have mentioned to me so many times too sparsely. Priceless. Thank you.

Hydra Ali7 3 ヶ月前

Same

iFPS 4 ヶ月前

I need part 2 of this. You can't just leave us hanging.

Aman Verma 4 ヶ月前

As a electronics student I knew what vacuum tubes are but finding out the history behind them was super interesting.

Jared F 4 ヶ月前

I think it’s interesting to realize that Tesla‘s invention of the radio would end up relying on an invention of Edison’s, the lightbulb, and a discovery by Edison that he only discovered because of his refusal to use Tesla’s AC, which led to first being used as a device to convert AC to DC, Lol, and then to create another device to amplify radio transmissions and then used to receive and play radio transmissions on a radios speaker.

Ace WMD 4 ヶ月前

@Jared Fif those two had gotten along we might not have gotten as far. Ironically the competition of one upping each other’s inventions was the driving force for advancement. Like most things competition is good for advancement.

Bram Fran 4 ヶ月前

We found the way to connect the seemingly irrelevant pieces of the puzzle.

Nuno Cordeiro 4 ヶ月前

I came here to say this. I knew about vacuum tubes and I knew they were rudimentary BJTs. But it was awesome learning the history and the details.

Mon 4 ヶ月前

i know about them and have even "messed around" with them, because i work with audio/music related stuff. The audio and music industry still uses them, they can produce the same quality of audio than a transistor based system, and they have a very "unique" kind of touch added to the sound. its usually described as a warm super subtle distortion in audio that's very pleasant, and its imposible to emulate trough digital stuff. even music from your phone going trough an vacuum tube desk amplifier will sound very crispy in the most pleasant way there could be. i know it sounds exaggerated, but if you got good ears and know what you're hearing, you'll see that it's different.

YOG RANA 2 ヶ月前

As a computer science, this gave me chills. Hope to see more such videos.

Angel 13 日前

As an aspiring Electronics Engineering student I find this video informative and meaningful specially about how controlling the flow of electrons revolutionized our lives.

Ant_Cac 4 ヶ月前

This pretty much summed up my first year enginnering course in 15 mins haha. Was real cool to see the one bit computer and forfathers of the building blocks of computing and networking today. It blows my mind that just over 100 years ago was when this all started seeing how far we are now

CSN 3 ヶ月前

May be self serving since my grandfather did his PhD thesis on one, but would be great to see a video about the alternatives to silicon transistors that lost out in the end!

Drew Compston 3 ヶ月前

Another excellent, accessible video describing the science of how electronics work in an easy to understand way. I'd love to see you describe the history of the development of the transistor (that you tease about at the end) in a future video.

Life = 42 4 ヶ月前

My mind is constantly blown how far humans have come in the last 100 years. Edit: Great to see awesome comments here. The goal is to become a peaceful species to explore the cosmos. Let's overcome the great filter!

Salwa Abusaad 4 ヶ月前

Same 😅

spontaneous bootay 4 ヶ月前

Thats the power of communication

Dont_Enter_My_Profile_ 4 ヶ月前

Don't read my name!...

HowDoYouUseSpaceBar 4 ヶ月前

@Dont_Enter_My_Profile_ 100 years of progress and we end up with *this*

Sir Woof Woof the third, Earl of woofington 4 ヶ月前

It's comforting to know that for 99% of the problems humanity faces today, an amelioration or even a straight fix is due in the next century. Really makes you optimistic for the future. Do not quote me on that number ;)

Alex Crouse 3 ヶ月前

So glad to see David getting attention for his awesome work!

Sisyphe 3 ヶ月前

Same, I did NOT expect this collab! This is great!

Swift Matic 21 日前

I was a kid when solid-state electronics were replacing vacuum tubes in consumer products. I remember that radio and TV repair was a widespread cottage industry. The best in that field were able to adapt and stay afloat, until the advent of integrated circuits.Great video 👍👍

Jeff Koppang 2 ヶ月前

I consider myself a very good electronics technician. I remember riding my bike to the 7-11 to buy a vacuum tube to replace one in our TV that had gone bad and killed the sound on it. I'm very familiar with how modern circuits operate, but I never quite understood the very basic science behind it. I can't wait for the next video and how Bell Labs made the 'next leap'. My father was an engineer for Western Electric and the AT&T. He and I have had long discussions over the 'demise' of Bell Labs and what a loss it was.

Nathan Dinamy 4 ヶ月前

a long time ago i wondered how lightbulbs transistors worked. these clip have been a great aid in understanding the basic! but you left me craving for more when it came to the era of silicon. please, release the next part, I'm becoming impatient.

pepto 3 日前

This was cool. I think most people just glaze over vacuum tubes in books but they are really cool to see and insane to think about. I've seen them but it's never really explained in depth like this and it's cool to have it visually all pieced together because it really is hard to envision. I know all the computer history but nothing of the history, I guess. Like programming in punch cards is hard to think of math is always seems unfathomable especially by today's standards. But it seems simple enough seeing it at work at such a smaller scale and then how those worked... it's really kind of insane how it became to be. The original programmers and people who laid these steps in place are insanely genius. I guess Babbage and Lovegood kind of envisioned it for us but man actually getting there is insane

Gamer SincePong 4 ヶ月前

I look forward to the next video in this evolution, because after this comes the transistor. I think it could be argued that the biggest milestones in human history are the mastery of fire, the printing press, the discovery of penicillin, and the invention of the transistor. There are literally billions of transistors used in our everyday life, yet very few are aware of how much they have changed the world.

Photon Jones 4 ヶ月前

They have all certainly hastened the end of our trajectory on this planet. It is interssting you left out the internal combustion engine.

Daniel Bamberger 4 ヶ月前

About 10 sextillion transistors have been made since they were invented in 1947.

Andrew Tollervey 4 ヶ月前

Don't forget the disco ball

Ahmed Hassan 4 ヶ月前

Discrete transistors have nothing on integrated circuits.

DOOMTHO 4 ヶ月前

I would probably add internal combustion and agriculture (I’m not 100% certain here, but I believe it was the advent of crop rotation that first enabled long-term/perpetual human settlement), but yeah, you’re definitely not wrong!

Gregg Rco 4 ヶ月前

Great Video. Growning up around tubes, then transistors, this stuck me awesome to learn how early they achieved 500 operations per second. I used a LED, 9v battery, a piece of plastic strand, and a solar cell in 1979 to transfer audio and 300bps information between two computers. Now, 40 GB/S is a standard. Soon, I understand today they are considering using the light bulbs in your home and environment as access points as you walk around for huge speeds over a Terrabyte. Just great. The webpage will be there before I lift my finger up off the mouse, lol.

N Stents 4 ヶ月前

Thank you for explaining amplification so well, and then the brilliant insight of Claude Shannon's to relate electric circuits to Boolean Algebra through switches, bringing Boolean Logic into the real world. It's not overstating the case to say that this genesis was the foundation for the digital age, moreso even than the first semiconductor - because semiconductors modify an already proven concept. Not to minimize the semiconductor!

Jordan Beagle 4 ヶ月前

8:42 I always find simple computers so interesting because a person can actually begin to grasp how they work

Raindrops Rising 3 ヶ月前

So fun to see the video Title is also part of an experiment. Love the content and the spirit of forever learning in order to optimize results.

DudeMeToo 3 ヶ月前

Wow. This is the most amazing nerd film I have ever watched. You’ve taken a mystery I’ve had as a kid from the 70’s and explained it to me like a 12 year old 👍 Thanks!

Better Call Bulba-Saur 4 ヶ月前

I have never seen the development of computers explained this fundamentally before. Thank you.

Bart Zuidgeest 4 ヶ月前

Then you must have been born yesterday or missed a lot😂

ZeFellowBud 4 ヶ月前

@Bart Zuidgeest well sir not everyone is a nerd like us.

Bart Zuidgeest 4 ヶ月前

@ZeFellowBud come on, basic schoolbooks provide the same explanation. Maybe American schoolbooks are suffering from all the book banning. Turing was gay, so maybe he is forbidden as, to woke 🤣

Sniperboy5551 4 ヶ月前

@bzuidgeest I think you hit the nail on the head. The American public education system keeps going further and further downhill. I’m a proud American, but even I know that our country is doomed if something doesn’t change soon.

San Kang 4 ヶ月前

@Bart Zuidgeest If you didn't know American School Systems were bad you must've born yesterday 😂😂

Zeff Malchazeen 4 ヶ月前

I took up computer engineering in college. We did all these activities and projects back then. I miss those times

Justin T. 3 ヶ月前

That was a good video, never felt 18 minutes go so fast, and the ending left me wanting to know how light bulbs evolved into transistors. It felt like watching an episode of a series with a cliff hanger.

MS Thalamus 3 ヶ月前

I had never seen (or rather heard) a relay-based computer before. I had always wondered why the computers in Star Trek made the noises they made, and now I know!

Abrar Soudagar 2 ヶ月前

As a Computer Science engg I thank you for this video, it should be included in the curriculum and more such videos should be included to understand how the computers have evolved. Gosh if you look at it, 1950s was not that long ago, basically in one human life the leaps computer science has taken is just bonkers, no wonder we are alarmed by AI.

RBisConfused 4 ヶ月前

There was always this weird gap of logic that my imagination could not cope with about the jump from 'mechanical to electric' (In computing history). Now you've seemingly made it so simple. I could have of course just looked this up myself, but I never had the motivation. It's videos like this that remind me why I want to work in media. Thank you for this wonderfully made video, this is probably the first time I've felt an actual youtube video cliffhanger. I'm looking forward to the silicon sequel.

Faladrin 4 ヶ月前

I don't think video does much of anything to discuss analog versus digital.

RBisConfused 4 ヶ月前

@Faladrin oh right, maybe its more like mechanical to electric. there was this jump in computing history when the machines were something you could see and understand with your eyes, then suddenly invisible, seemingly like magic. Its just a random decade-old thought that the video helped me make sense of. Notable only to my brain which I am happy about.

BBROPHOTO 4 ヶ月前

This is one of your videos that could have been 2 hours and it wouldn’t have felt long enough! This was amazing! Thank you so much.

Brandt 4 ヶ月前

Amen yess a three hour movies would maybe be enough it really was great.

JustmeBeingme 4 ヶ月前

Hmm...I felt he rambled on too much already

Captain Oates 4 ヶ月前

The title made me think that the light bulb had some relavance in todays world apart from the historical progression thing. Does anyone know where this technology is still current?😁 Apologies if I missed something, I promise I watched the whole thing.

bbjygm 3 ヶ月前

@Captain Oates based on the video, he spent a lot of it showing how the light bulb was one of the milestone inventions along the path toward computers. He didn't show a lot of other ways it's used which is a shame because he could pick any other invention along the chain and do the same thing as this video and have the same basis to call that thing the greatest invention.

Hydra Ali7 3 ヶ月前

Ikr

jd Jd 2 ヶ月前

I work as a test engineer testing induction power supplies used in all heat treating applications to metals , melting , and furnaces / billet heaters. Pretty cool to see where it all started.

Ashes Downs ヶ月前

Most Excellent Vid, concise and very informative. Born in 1963 I grew up when vacuum tubes were still in use (but then again, so were silk top hats) and witnessed the transistor age come into being. This vid helped me to understand WHY. Many, many thanks! Well done!

Pedro Pereira ヶ月前

Absolutely brilliant explanation. I already knew a few bits but the connections were enlightening!

Roger Edrinn 4 ヶ月前

This was extremely well done!!! I was sure I'd only watch a little, but your graphics and narration were so well done I stayed to the end. Kudos!!!! 👍👍👍👍

Ali Zaidan Thamyeez 3 ヶ月前

Veritasium I just want to point out that the first programmable electronic computer wasn’t the eniac, it was the colossus mark 1 which came out 2 years before the eniac and the colossus mark 1 was used to find the key settings for the Nazi Lorenz cipher in Bletchley park. The colossus mark 1 was also much more reliable because the person who made it, Tommy Flowers, knew the ideal ways to make it reliable

Jo Freddie 4 ヶ月前

Colossus was a set of vacuum tubes based computers developed by British codebreakers in the years 1943-1945 BEFORE ENIAC. Colossus is regarded as the world's first PROGRAMMABLE, electronic, digital computer, it was programmed by switches and plugs

Dont_Enter_My_Profile_ 4 ヶ月前

Don't read my name!...

A Barratt 4 ヶ月前

That's true, but I note he carefully said "programmable" computer. Colossus wasn't programmable. However, Colossus would have been worth a mention, simply because it was that endeavour that worked out how to reliably use thousands of valves in a single machine (i.e. never turn it off). I don't know if Eniac benefited from this or whether they had to work it out for themselves. Arguably, demonstrating that electronics could be reliable enough for practical use was as important as being the first electronic computer. Had it been built and been impractical because tubes kept blowing, maybe no one would have bothered to build another. What Colossus was was fast. When the designs finally became public, sometime in the late 1990s I think, the first thing someone did was write a piece of software for a PC to emulate it. I can remember reading that it ran not significantly faster than a real Colossus, even though a mid-1990s PC had 50 years of computation development in its favour.

Kai Tanna-Shah 4 ヶ月前

It was kept secret until the 1970s though, so it didn't have as much of an impact on the development of computers as ENIAC

Nedolium 4 ヶ月前

And before both was the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (or the ABC for short) built over at Iowa Stat University.

ElPaso TubeAmps ヶ月前

Love it...I worked for Univac at NASA and was initially called a "FE" for field engineer. It was soon changed to "CE" for customer engineer as that is what IBM called their field techs.

T3rraL33t 4 ヶ月前

As an electrical and computer engineer this was fascinating. Please finish the story!

Scotty Photon ヶ月前

Great overview! Cool to see the beginnings of so much technology and other aspects like boolean algebra.

Jordan Ketterer 3 ヶ月前

wil you please follow this up with a equally indepth history on silicon? i loved everthing about this it is great to see all of this put together is such a well thought out manner. thanks for a great video

M. Riggs 4 ヶ月前

Congratulations on being so precise about this subject. I watched a lot about it in another channels and people usually misconcept many things on this subject.

Tylen Johnson 4 ヶ月前

As someone who works for a commercial and industrial lighting agency, I love this. Such a great history lesson. This is the kind of Veritasium video I love to see!

Jokes with Mitochondria 4 ヶ月前

without a doubt

Travel 4 ヶ月前

@Jokes with Mitochondria funny username lol

Sterling Archer* 4 ヶ月前

@Jokes with Mitochondria ur username actually made me click on ur profile. Love ur content hahaha. Funny stuff

Zes 4 ヶ月前

wrr

On My Workbench 3 ヶ月前

If I remember correctly it's because of the relays used in the early computers that we refer to software/hardware problems as bugs because in one of the early computers the designers were not getting the results that they expected and it was traced down to a relay that was not functioning correctly to to a moth that had gotten stuck in between the contacts of the relay preventing the contacts to close correctly. The moth was attracted by the heat given off by the tubes and this is where the expression WE HAVE A BUG IN THE SYSTEM came from.

Gaurav Chauhan 2 ヶ月前

The evolution from agriculture to industry, spanning ages, and the leap from the light bulb to artificial intelligence in just a century-both profoundly mesmerizing.

Bhaskar ヶ月前

As an Electronics Engineer, I enjoyed every second of this.

xMcBlxck 4 ヶ月前

Fun fact: Thermionic emission is also used in microwaves (more precisely in the magnetron), so the light bulb is indirectly related to the invention of the microwave.

JMS Models 3 ヶ月前

Thermionic emission is also used in x-ray machines

hainesjw ヶ月前

And related: the machines that etch patterns onto silicon to make integrated chips. Maybe someone would like to “redstone” that! 😂

xMcBlxck ヶ月前

@hainesjw LOL 😂

Devendra Pandey 2 ヶ月前

As an electronic engineer I can say this is one of the most accurate and best representation of our field I've ever seen

MonkeyJedi99 4 ヶ月前

When I was a kid in the early 1970's, our Zenith TV had a LOT of vacuum tubes in it. We even had a monthly (I think) visit from a technician who would check the condition of each of the vacuum tubes and replace the ones that were failing. I was very young and dumb and assumed that he was putting new television programs in the TV for us. I held this belief until I saw "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" (the one with Gene Wilder in the title role). That movie had a scene that explained how TV programs got to your TV and Wonka's invention of sending chocolate bars via a similar technology.

raffriff42 4 ヶ月前

In those days hardware stores sold replacement tubes, and they would have a "self service tube tester." (I'll pause while you do an image search…) You would yank all the tubes out of your broken radio or TV, bring them into the store, test them, and of course, replace any the machine told you was "bad."

h8GWBî 4 ヶ月前

And people today complain that modern microprocessor-controlled electronics are unreliable.....🙄

Steve Sether 4 ヶ月前

@raffriff42 I recall a hardware store that had one of these giant testers in the hallway of the mall it was located in up to the early to mid 80s. I can't say I ever saw anyone use it back then of course, as nobody used vacuum tube TVs by then. But the device sat their in disuse for quite a while.

Zyo117 4 ヶ月前

Back in the day before things were made intentionally difficult or impossible to replace or fix. Nowadays, if something goes wrong in your TV even finding a repairman would be difficult. Most people just get a new TV.

hawk 7886 4 ヶ月前

This story becomes a fanciful "grandpa tale" if Right to Repair fails =(

Al Gordon 4 ヶ月前

65 years of age and I had most of the bits that made up this video. But it took the video to put it into a logical and cohesive whole. Thanks Derick.

Helen 3 ヶ月前

Funny story: prior to vacuum tubes being used in radio (and even later for cheap at-home radio kits) they used what were called “Crystal sets.” Small wires were delicately placed on a piece of crystal and, if you got the position just right, it would do the necessary task of rectification. Nobody really understood how it worked and it was always a pain to find the right spots on the crystal, so vacuum tubes became the standard once they were invented. The thing is, those crystals were made of silicon. They were using semiconductors back then. Had vacuum tubes not been invented, they would likely have continued research into the properties of silicon and understood how they worked and how to craft them. While we have the vacuum tube to thank for modern computers, it is not unfair to say the decades of their use was kind of a digression.

Arne Christian Rosenfeldt ヶ月前

Still for a CRT, a microwave, a klystron in a broadcast or a traveling wave tube in a TV satellite are great applications of tubes. Interestingly, the current requirements already on the high voltage side of an electric train are so high that we could not get away with such simple tubes ( just scaled up). Only many small tubes would achieve the current. But this would be expensive. I imagine that small tubes each can be switched to create and aim an 1kV electron beam. They all sit in one of four large vessels ( input and output connectors ) and shot over a large distance into a common anode ( for each vessel ). But you know what: We went from relays straight to semiconductors for this low speed application.

Dude bro 4 ヶ月前

Man, you always make me motivated to learn science and math...

The Happy Vulcan! 4 ヶ月前

If I remember correctly, the ENIAC started miscalculating in an odd way, not like when one of the vacuum tubes normally broke. They searched for what was broken, and found a beetle. A bug. That's where the term comes from.

Super Dave 4 ヶ月前

Thank you. This was extremely informative about our history and development of the computer.

John Kailua 4 ヶ月前

My father was a professor at Cornell University, and I have some memories from the early era of computers. My father acquired for his office in about 1960 a purely mechanical calculator made by Friden that could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and, COMPUTE A SQUARE ROOT. It was about twice the size of an electric typewriter, very noisy in operation, and cost the then-huge sum of $1300. I also remember being taken in about 1958, as a very small child, to see Cornell's first electronic computer, running on banks of vacuum tubes and pretty much filling a former engineering school machine shop,

Tymofei 4 ヶ月前

ur so lucky

miyamoto900 4 ヶ月前

U still have that calculator?

John Kailua 4 ヶ月前

@miyamoto900 Heavens no. To start with, it was always property of the university.

miyamoto900 4 ヶ月前

@John Kailua can we steal it ? What would it take ? Please make a plan and inform me at earliest. Yours truly, Miyamoto.

Nostromo 4 ヶ月前

@miyamoto900 I have a tesla model 3. I'll drive getaway, deal?

Goldenah 4 ヶ月前

Awesome. This was the best computer history lesson I've seen in a long while. Thank you.

Abhishek G Nair 2 ヶ月前

Stellar, just superb work, even for Veritasium! I am an electronics engineer and I can tell you all freshers in my profession should be made to watch this video

Scott Trandem 3 ヶ月前

You should do a follow up video about Colossus. It was a top secret vacuum tube computer used in code breaking in 1943. Two years before ENIAC.

Gamini Heraliyawala 3 ヶ月前

Thank you very much for this great presentation absolutely rich with deep insights of the evolution of computers from the very primitive stage. Great stuff with great clarity...👍

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