How does data work?
Somehow I can't get my head around it.
But it didn't just fall from the sky; some people must have made it work that way. So you have a piece of metal, and you make changes to it. And these changes then lead to something like a calculator, computer, cell phone, or whatever working. But how does it work? How can a person change something on this metal plate so that something comes out of it in the end?
So just the basic mechanics, not how transistors or microchips or anything like that work, because I don't even understand the basic mechanics. It has to do with translating numbers into representations that consist only of ones and zeros. But how can the metal even know what that is exactly? That it has some combination of numbers (which I don't even know how it comes about, so how do I tell the metal to do exactly that with a combination of numbers?)
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This has nothing to do with metals.
Data is what the human being defines.
If you take a stoneboard and ridge something in there, then you wrote data on a board. How they are interpreted depends on man. This can be an image, a text or numbers.
The same on paper – so no metal in the game. You can paint pictures, write texts on them, write numbers on them, and even save music (as notes).
The first step was then to store music with nubs on a drum. The nubs have raised a metal tongue and left "slide". This then creates a sound. If you make several metal tongues of different lengths next to each other, you can play melodies. You know that today as a "game watch".
Then paper was used with holes in it which then controlled a piano or other instrument. The first one should have been acquitted. The paper either blocks the air to the pipe or if there's a hole in it the air goes through. The next step was not to lead the air into a pipe, but into a bellows that blows up and presses a button on a piano.
For example, "music data" has been stored a long time ago. The same is still MIDI today, instead of paper, the music is then represented as a chain of numbers.
Then someone came to use the perforated paper for automatic looms. There were already looms that could weave a fabric without humans, but without patterns in it. For fabrics with patterns, people were still needed and it was much slower than the machine-operated looms. Thus, patterns were extremely expensive and only very rich people were reserved. Controlled by a perforated paper, a loom could then weave recurring patterns in record time. Suddenly colorful clothes became also possible for poorer people.
The web also uses hole cards and tickets. In order that thieves were unable to steal tickets, fields were punched in the map like "Male/Female", "Large/Small", "Thick/Thin", "Putted/Unused", etc.
Thus, a sleek little thief could not use the ticket of a large rich thickness.
The one with the loom and the tickets knew a certain Herman Hollerith
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Hollerith
He then built a system for the US census where data of the inhabitants were found in paper. Thus, statistical data such as "immigrants", "M/F", "Hautcolor", "Old-range", "married", "Number of children", etc. could be recorded. With the so-called Hollerith machine it was possible to evaluate this quite quickly. Counters then counted on certain holes on the cards or not. So it was possible to calculate percentages as how many men and women there were etc.
In the Second World War, a modified Hollerith system was able to establish logical links and was also invented incredibly fast. This is the colossus that was able to crack the code of the German radio teleprinters by statistical analyzes of encrypted teleprinters. That's why the bombers in the 2nd World Cup threw not only propaganda records but also many side cutters so that the resistance could destroy telephone lines and the Wehrmacht then had to escape on encrypted radio. And the Colossus cracked almost immediately from D-Day.
And the processing of hole strips by logical links then led to the computer.
The hole strip was then later replaced by magnetic tapes and finally magnetic disks, ie hard drives and disks. And these in turn were then the flash memory, ie the SSD and USB sticks.
Data remote transmission has been very long, the first correct computers had already. Because screens and keyboards like you know were not yet available today. Instead, you used teleprinters. And they could then also be connected to a computer by telephone, because for this they were teleprinters (to send telegrams via telegraph line or telephone line) yes there.
It has not changed so much over the last 100 years, only greatly improved – and this in very small steps! The efficiency has then grown exponentially.
So I still understand the hole card. and then came a device and felt with feelings where there were no holes, and then a signal was passed on and a pointer moved on. then one could see at the end where the whole show stood.
but I still don't understand the basic principle. I have electricity now and how do I get information from it now? yes a circuit can be on and off. but what does that mean to me? that is not yet information, and how do I bring the circuit to or out when it flows? And what does it bring me back? I don't understand all this.
Just as you can do with the light switches in the apartment.
Turn on one in a room, you have the information "A room bright". If you have another room, you have the information "Two Room Bright" and so on.
The ENIAC "Computer" has done this with ten lines that can be switched on or off exactly. Each digit of a decimal number could thus be represented by one of ten lines. In fact, it has also made bulbs to display the numbers.
Instead of the decimal system 0-9, you can also count 0-1 in the binary system. That's how it works. As in the decimal system after the 9 a 10 comes, in the binary system after the 1 a one zero comes. The "one zero" then means "2" in the decimal system. A "one-one" then means 3. Then you need another place, 100 which is "4".
The first programmable computer (ENIAC came later and was not programmable) was the Z3 of Konrad Zuse. The relay used instead of "light switch". Relays could turn on and off each other and thus each represent a "0" or a "1", ie the digits of the binary system.
The ENIAC worked "backward" in the decimal system, but instead of relays, use radio tubes that could switch over much faster. This was able to reckon quickly, but it took days and weeks to recapsulate the components, in contrast to the Z3 it was not possible to program them, but to rebuild them for a single task at the same time.
The Colossus was not a computer at all, but worked digitally with tubes and a lofty telephone technician has found out how to switch the tubes particularly fast and much more reliable.
And from the technique of colossus with the binary logic of the Z3 the first "right computer" came about in the present sense.
Tubes were then simply replaced by transistors that make the same, only needed much less space and current, then dozens of transistors were assembled on a chip. This made it much smaller and more energy-saving and at the same time much faster.
And out of dozens of transistors were hundreds, out of hundreds, thousands. This was then the time around 1977, you could then create an entire CPU in a chip instead of having to connect a hundred chips to get a CPU (for example, with the PDP-11).
The soon following Motorola 68000 CPU was called because the 68 thousand transistors contained. It was even 16-bit, so without taking several steps it could process quite large numbers (up to 65535).
Then the x86 of the PC followed, first also only with 16-bit (mid 1980s), then 32-bit (about 1995) and today we have 64-bit.
You can't teach the metal.
But you can magnetize parts of the metal.
Whenever the magnetic field changes from the north to the south (magnetization change) you can create a 1 because a pulse can be triggered there.
To do this, you have to move the metal evenly and pass a copper coil.
The magnetization change triggers a short voltage pulse in the coil – the 1 was read.
The 0 is more complicated because there is nothing.
Solution – you create a clock from evenly arranged 1s. If there is nothing between the clocks, then it is a 0 and comes something between the clocks, then there is a 1.
I'm looking for a cool video like that started. My favorite buzz had a visit to his buddy.
Found it. It's worth a quarter of an hour.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O4A-vXZTAyc&list=PLwa_XfY-IOcXyX2zD402eRMSfI0zEpy2t&pp=iAQB
but that doesn't bring me further because I do not understand the basic mechanism. As I have read, the Z3 was the first computer and I don't understand exactly what happened or what happened. how he came about.
At the beginning, the purely mechanical processes were only electrically copied in the first calculating machines (stack rolls, registers, …) (intermediate tubes, relays).
There are still some videos to make.
If you really can't understand this (you might lack the sense of it), then you'll be comforted by not having to know how something works just to use it.
The entire computer system has not been developed by a person alone. It has evolved over many years from various ideas of thousands of people. Like a technical evolution.
If you understand English, I can recommend the video series "Crash course computer science". They are available on YouTube and explain everything from transistors to logic gates, cpu data structures and programming languages.
There were very wise scholars who invented this for us.
If you understand English, I can recommend the video series "Crash course computer science". They are available on YouTube and explain everything from transistors to logic gates, cpu data structures and programming languages.