Why The First Computers Were Made Out Of Light Bulbs

A huge thanks to David Lovett for showing me his awesome relay and vacuum tube based computers. Check out his YouTube channel @UsagiElectric

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References:

Stibitz, G. R. (1980). Early computers. In A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century (pp. 479-483). Academic Press.

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Written by Petr Lebedev, Derek Muller and Kovi Rose
Edited by Trenton Oliver
Animated by Mike Radjabov, Ivy Tello and Fabio Albertelli
Filmed by Derek Muller & Raquel Nuno
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images & Pond5
Music from Epidemic Sound
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev, & Emily Zhang
Thumbnail by Ignat Berbeci

[uiouio]

Light bulbs were such a good idea, they became the symbol for good ideas

[Life_]

My mind is constantly blown how far humans have come in the last 100 years.

Edit: Great to see awesome comments here. The goal is to become a peaceful species to explore the cosmos. Let's overcome the great filter!

[crawfordharris]

I designed and built my first computer with vacuum tubes in 1957. Being a ham radio operator I knew a little about electronics. Also, I was a lazy math and physics major. There were 2 computers in town. One belonged the TVA. Being a part of the government, I was refused access. The other belonged to the largest bank in town. It took up the entire 3rd floor of one of their buildings downtown. They explained how it worked. Several friends contributed tubes. Large and not exactly cost efficient, it did less than my slide rule. It did give me a bit of a leg up years later in getting a job with an airline as an assembly language core programmer on IBM 360s.

[swiftmatic]

I was a kid when solid-state electronics were replacing vacuum tubes in consumer products.
I remember that radio and TV
repair was a widespread cottage industry. The best in that field were able to adapt and stay afloat, until the advent of integrated circuits.Great video 👍👍

[JonLusk]

As a Computer Engineer, I would like to thank you for illuminating the origins of my profession. This was an exceptional, historical documentary.

[charliecarrot]

I've lived my whole life hearing about vacuum tubes and never really knowing how they work. This was an amazing presentation connecting lightbulbs to transistors. I'm stunned.

[tobiaschristo]

Dude, I’ve watched so many of your videos, and you are one of my absolute favorite channels on YouTube. Your team does such an amazing job between research, writing, producing, editing, etc… Veritasium makes GREAT content! Please keep doing what you’re doing! Thanks!

[yoface]

As someone who programs, the title made absolute sense to me, as anyone who codes knows you almost never know what actually is going wrong when something does, so writing code that gives you cues of at which point the code breaks, in a more analog design, using lightbulbs as status indicators makes a lot of sense

[kedo]

Seeing the progress of computers laid out in a timeline is one of the most fascinating things to me. I've probably seen/ read the story about a dozen times and it's still interesting

[miinyoo]

I have to give mad props to your editor/animator(s). They do such a tremendous job distilling your scripts into visual language even though we all know none of this is actually classical mechanics at its roots. The classicality of it is emergent and the art style helps with that even though it is not explicitly said.

[gkossatzgmxde]

The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. The Z3 was built with 2, 600 relays, implementing a 22-bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz.

[donavan]

For the record I have worked in IT for over 30 years and this is the first explanation of how we got from light bulbs to circuits that actually made sense. Showing the model K went a long way to understanding it.

[PrasannaMestha]

Mad props to Veritassium for explaining such a complex subject in such a simplified manner. Brilliant!

[alaam.abojaish]

As a 3rd year Electrical Electronics Engineering student, I can say that this video is by far the best video that made me finally understand all these theoretical concepts we took in our lessons, you are a true genius

[taylorbrown]

As a guy who majored in computer science, I gotta say this is one of the coolest videos I've seen in the Youtube science community in a while. I never made the connection between lightbulbs and the invention of vacuum tube based machines. Thank you Derek for putting together this amazing narrative for the fundamental turning point of electronic computer history!

[Better_Call_Bulba-Saur]

I have never seen the development of computers explained this fundamentally before. Thank you.

[yjxobuq]

Vote for making video about silicon computers😊

[egerlachca]

I loved this video. I didn't know half of what you taught about the history of the triode.

My one complaint is that the British Colossus Mark I predated ENIAC by 2 years, though it was kept classified for another 50+ so it isn't as widely known.

Would love to see a video from you about Enigma, Colossus, and all the math and science that went into WWII codebreaking.

[hackcrew]

As someone who works for a commercial and industrial lighting agency, I love this. Such a great history lesson. This is the kind of Veritasium video I love to see!

[AmanVerma-iyrv]

As a electronics student I knew what vacuum tubes are but finding out the history behind them was super interesting.