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Minicomputers Digital Logic Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Computer Graphics, Music & Art Input & Output Computer Games Personal Computers Mobile Computing Networking & the Web What’s Next?
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Supercomputers Software Theater Memory & Storage Mainframes Real-Time Computing Early Computer Companies Birth of the Computer AnalogComputers Punched Cards Calculators Immersion Pathway Orientation Theater

REVOLUTION
THE FIRST 2000 YEARS OF COMPUTING
2000 years? That’s a lot of history! Computers haven’t been around that long, but they got their start back then, with tools that people made to help them count and use numbers. This Discovery Deck is a tool, too: use it with your friends and family to discover some of the storiesfrom the first 2000 years of computing. Then, just imagine: what do you think will happen in the next 2000 years?

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CALCULATORS
63: NUMBER OF BEADS IN A TRADITIONAL CHINESE SUAN PAN ABACUS
Numbers! They’re the language of computers. But how did people work with numbers before computers? One answer can be found just by looking down at your hands: can you find 10 things that help youcount? Look around this gallery and you will find many more. Beads, tiles, slide rules—some of them have helped people do math for thousands of years. See if there are any calculators that look familiar. Which ones were around when your parents were your age?

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PUNCHED CARDS
63,000,000: NUMBER OF PEOPLE LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1890
How long do you think it would take to countevery single person who lives in the US? The government has done this every 10 years since 1790; by 1890, the country had grown so big that older ways of counting didn’t work anymore. Herman Hollerith solved the problem by inventing a machine that recorded information about people as patterns of holes in paper cards. His “tabulator” was a technological revolution and was the first step in creating agiant computer company, IBM (you can see lots of their machines in this gallery). Punched cards became so successful that they were used in computers for over 70 years afterwards.

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BIRTH OF THE COMPUTER
1: ONE-OF-A-KIND
Your fingerprints are unique—and so were the first computers. Early on, if you needed a computer, you had to build it yourself. Look carefully at all the computersin this gallery: each was made to solve specific problems, and every single one is the only one of its kind. What makes each of them different from the others? How are they similar? Imagine what it would take to build a computer that’s like nothing else in the world! What kinds of problems would you want it to solve?

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REAL-TIME COMPUTING
7/20/69: DATE OF THE FIRST MOON LANDING
Didyou know that there are computers in your car? The thermostat in your house? Maybe even your washing machine? Many modern devices are controlled by computers that use information from the real world to make very quick changes to what the machines are doing. (House too cold? The heat turns on!) Real-time computers have done the most amazing things. Look around and see if you can find one that wasused on a naval ship, in an airplane, in a rocket that went to the Moon—even in a human body! When you go home, see how many real-time computers you can find around the house.

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MAINFRAMES
The computers you see here are only small parts of much bigger ones, called mainframes. An entire mainframe could take up a whole room! But even though they were big, they were limited in what theycould do. If a business or company outgrew its mainframe, it sometimes needed a whole new computer. Small computers are more common today, but big companies still use mainframes. You may not know it, but there’s probably one helping your family’s bank give out cash at the ATM.
© PETER RUCK/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

360: NAME OF IBM’S MOST SUCCESSFUL MAINFRAME COMPUTER FAMILY

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