I learned a really cool fact at school today!
Did you know that the first computers were as big as a whole room! Can you imagine trying to use a computer that big? Not many people had them. In the beginning, only the government used them, and they could do a lot less than even a cell phone can today!
The first computers had almost no memory… so you couldn’t even save one picture on them! They used things called “vacuum tubes” to store information, and they had to use a lot of them.
ENIAC, one of the first computers, had 17,468 of these vacuum tubes. There's a picture of some of them on the right.
No wonder the computers were so big!
- This is a US Army photo showing part of ENIAC, one of the first computers. It's so big!