Old computers didn’t look like the computers of today. We don’t just mean the retro, curvy plastic designs of older PCs, Macs or even Sinclair Spectrums and Amigas. We’re talking about the origins of computing, when “computer-room” meant a room filled with one computer, and terminals looked more like furniture than hardware. Giant, messy furniture with cables trailing everywhere.
Royal Pingdom has put together a peek into the past with a gallery entitled “Retro delight: Gallery of early computers (1940s – 1960s)”. The names alone are romantic and evocative, sounding more like Chinese bicycles than the foundations of the modern world: Whirlwind, Colossus and Pegasus join the more familiar ENIAC (and the above-pictured WITCH).
The pictures are wonderful, and show a world of shrinking machines, where sizes are measured in tons, memory came in non-prefixed bytes and storage was done on paper tapes. Take a look and consider that the laptop you are viewing them on is probably more powerful than all of these machines put together, and certainly a lot smaller.
Retro delight: Gallery of early computers (1940s – 1960s) [Pingdom. Thanks, Peter!]
