10 Things You Won’t Believe About Computers in the 1950s

  1. Rooms were crammed with them.
  2. The price tag is in the millions! The first computers were so prohibitively costly that only huge organizations like governments and businesses could afford them.
  3. Punched cards were utilized. Do you remember the little cards with holes that you used to borrow library books? To enter and store information, computers of the 1950s utilized punched cards.
  4. They were so underpowered that they couldn’t even show images.
  5. Ice was used to chill them down. Due to the extreme heat produced by these massive machines, ice was required to keep them operational. Is it possible to envisage keeping a computer operating by continually adding ice to the cooling system?

6. Number of users was really low (6). In the 1950s, only a select few individuals could afford and make use of computers due to their expensive price and restricted functionality.

7. It was difficult to rely on them. 7. There was a high incidence of hardware failure in early computers, and they often broke down.

8. Vacuum tubes were utilized. Using vacuum tubes to process information, these early computers were both big and costly.

9. you needed specific instruction to utilize them. In the 1950s, computer use required extensive training and a mastery of complex computer programs.

10. They were the forerunners of the modern computers we use today, which is saying a lot. These primitive computers had many flaws, but they were the forerunners of modern computers and changed the way information was processed and stored.

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