I found the first video on early computing very interesting. Although I knew of some of the information I did not know all of it, so finding out more about the history of one of my interests is always exciting. Hearing about the first types of “computers” or machines that helped speed up algorithms or counting or other functions of that nature, that were not always extremely difficult, just time consuming really shows how far we’ve come today. Most of us rely on our computers for everything. The preface of the video explains it well, we rely on computers to run almost every function of the modern world, and it truly is one of if not the biggest change to human society.

Hearing about the Harvard Mark I makes me think of how almost every couple of years, we speed up our chips in our computers to be double the speed of the last chip, and what that truly means. Multiplications taking 6 seconds is not a long time by any means, but as things become more complex, they require faster times computing such things, making the technologies we have today that much more remarkable in comparison. One interesting thing I’ve noticed is most progress was done via physical changes with older computers, versus now it is mostly done with software/algorithms. I wonder if a radical change to the physical portion of technology will be a change we see soon, or have we move passed that completely?