One of my favorite books is “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman”, and in it Richard Feynman talks about how they did the calculations for the Atomic Bomb...rooms of teams of people with colored index cards that they would perform various things, stack them in a certain order, another team would pick them up, bring them to another room, and people would do more calculations.
I found it fascinating...
I used to be a whiz at math but as I get older, I get worser and worser.
I recently found a new TI calculator on clearance, marked down from $140 to $30. I think it is a TI Inspire CX. Anyway, after taking it out, playing with it and reading a few instructions online, I have no idea of how to use it.
I will probably give it to my Son-in-Law.
Imagine what those Atomic Scientists would have done with it.
rlmorel wrote: “One of my favorite books is “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman”, and in it Richard Feynman talks about how they did the calculations for the Atomic Bomb...rooms of teams of people with colored index cards that they would perform various things, stack them in a certain order, another team would pick them up, bring them to another room, and people would do more calculations.”
Each process step involved probability distributions. The process was called “Monte Carlo”. I’ve read that this term was actually classified for some time.
Before that PLUGBOARDS were used for programming - physically (wires) routing data signals between specific functional blocks of computers to do the different parts of the required calculations.
The memory programmable systems like this one were still VERY primitive and had less calculating power than your watch. They STILL performed at a workrate the equivalent of over 1000 humans with adding machines.
I found it fascinating...
Reminds me of the ladies who acted as "human computers" for NASA in the movie "Hidden Figures."
That was a great book!