Today, let's watch the microcomputer invent itself. The
University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our civilization run, and
the people whose ingenuity That extension of your brain, the
computer on your desk, is changing human history as dramatically
as harnessing fire once did. The programmable computer, first
conceived by Babbage in the 1830s, wasn't finally built until
the 1930s. At first, we used fragile radio tubes in its logic
circuits. Soon after WW-II, we figured out how to replace those
bulky and failure-prone tubes with the new transistors. Then the
real fun could begin. Those computers were huge, isolated
machines. In 1943 Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said, "I think
there's a world market for maybe five computers." With that kind
of thinking, no one paid much attention in 1952 when a British
scientist named It seems now possible to envisage electronic
equipment in a solid block with no connecting wires. The block
may consist of layers of insu