I’ve been thinking about the amazing ingenuity and creativity in the area of computing since 1970 that makes access to, and the development of, beauty possible. In Spring quarter 1970 I took a computer programming class using Fortran. I now have an iPhone 6S Plus. Below are the comparisons between the two machines That I collected online from Wikipedia. The differences in computing are amazing!
The IBM 360 required Punch Cards for each line of code. If you made a mistake you would have to retype each punch card with a mistake on it. I would submit my stack of punch cards in the morning, and pick up a printout in the afternoon. Usually there were mistakes in my coding, and I’d have to redo my punch cards again and submit again. The programming was only in Fortran. There was no other input or output available to me as a student.
Wow, what a difference now! my iPhone, that fits in the palm of my hand, is 111 times as fast is that IBM 360, and has 16000 times the storage. The IBM 360 cost $253,000 in 1970; My iphone cost $750 in 2015. The Iphone has voice recognition, fingerprint recognition, Multi-touch touchscreen display, triple microphone, Apple M8 motion coprocessor, 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer, digitalcompass, iBeacon, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, Touch ID fingerprint reader, barometer (from Wikipedia 2/20/17) 2 cameras, internet, and email. I also can dictate and have it converted to text files.
I can, and do, access great art from museums around the world and other places on the internet. I also can share my blog, my art, and my writing and poetry, which is immediately accessible to anyone with internet access anywhere in the world.
I only wish that the ingenuity and creativity could have helped us become more compassionate and appreciative and supportive of each other as humans and sentient beings on this amazingly beautiful planet Earth.
IBM 360 (1969) at Western Washington University | My IPhone 6 Plus 2016 | |
cost | $253,000. For a typical system | $750 |
input | IBM punch cards, tape | Multi-touch touchscreen display, triple microphone, Apple M8 motion coprocessor, 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis accelerometer, digitalcompass, iBeacon, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, Touch ID fingerprint reader, barometer (from Wikipedia 2/20/17)
2 cameras, internet, email, also can dictate and have it converted to text |
Speed of cpu | The 1967 IBM System/360 Model 91 could do up to 16.6 MB instructions per second.[4] (from Wikipedia 2/20/17) | 1.85 GHz dual-core 64-bit ARMv8-A[2][3] “Twister”
(My iphone is 111 times as fast as the IBM 360!) |
Space and weight | Took up a whole floor of a building at WWU and weighed | 6.8 ounces, fits in the palm of my hand |
storage | up to 8 MB of main memory … 512 KB, 768 KB or 1024 KB was more common (from Wikipedia 2/20/17) | 128 gb (the iphone has 16,000 times the storage that the IBM 360!) |
output | Line printer | Screen, telephone, internet, email, social media, photos, videos |