I worked for General Electric Company back in the infancy of the computer, 1967-1972.
The systems I specialized in were G.E. 115's made in Italy by Olivetti Inc. Their very Basic system was in a room about a 12 X 12 with Special air conditioning, 4K of Memory, No Keyboard but about 24 Lights and switches on the "Console" , A very basic 300 Punch Cards per minute reader, 3 reel to reel Tape drives,and optionally a removable Disc drive that consisted of 8 spinning discs about 16 inches in diameter PLUS a "High Speed(1000 lines per minute) 168 column Printer that used "Pin Feed paper. To "Boot Up", you entered a Hexadecimal Code that told the Punched card reader . This to read 3 cards with Boot Up Instructions. When this computer was Booted Up, You could now load your "Punched Card" Program. This when Loaded would tell the computer what to do with "Data Punched Cards" you read into the Computer Via the Card Reader. Some of the "Advanced Systems had an "IBM Selectric Typewriter" AKA the Flying Golf Ball type head.Oh By the way, All the documents concerning the Italian made C P U were written in Italian. I needed to carry a Translator dictionary with me to trace a electronic circuit( Transistors) thru the And Gates, Nand gates, NOR gates and whatever else was involved before Integrated Circuits were involved.This New discovery called Transistors and resisters, diodes relays and whatever were on a Printer circuit on a Plug in Board which was installed in the "Main Frame. In front of all these Cards were Pins with Copper wire strung from Pin to Pin in a certain configuration to accomplish what ever the program wanted done.
Oh Hot Rod, You Stirred my memory with Speeds of Cell phones, Computing power of cell phones ETC. Now I know why these hair are Grey Hair!!
Jerry
Hmmmm - - - -I suppose that several million vehicles that have been put out there on the road since the mid-1970's all need to be retro-fitted to use points, right? How about all those unreliable electronic controlled fuel injection systems, electronic-timing engines without distributors, etc. that go 100K miles or more without any servicing at all? Yep, there is going to be a huge cottage industry converting all of them to mechanical-switch systems. Of course, the vehicle is going to need a trailer to haul around the relay box that's going to be needed for all those functions.
The original computer system for the Life and Casualty insurance company in Nashville Tennessee took up an entire floor of a high-rise office building, and had less computing power than the cell phones we carry around today. It used hundreds of racks of Eccles-Jordan mechanical relays, and had to have its own air conditioning system to keep the relay racks cool. A similar system to run fuel injection and ignition would make the vehicle approximately the size and weight of a Greyhound bus!
Jerry
