What were the early computers like?

Answer by  duneraider21 (149)

Early computers were extremely large, very slow, and extremely costly. They could take up the size of a room by theirself- troubleshooting them would be a nightmare, being so large. Vaccuum tubes would break throughout the day and would have to be replaced constantly.

Answer by  abc25 (196)

Early computers such as the ENIAC were primarily made of vacuum tube transistors and utilized a large amount of space (i. e. 680 square feet) and power (150kW).

Answer by  dbieniek (137)

The early computers were much like you'd expect. They were much larger, slower, and expensive. The earliest computers took up entire walls, and used a type of punch card to complete mathematical calculations.

Answer by  pcguy (307)

The first computers were mainly used to translate encrypted messages of the Germans in WWII, later variants were used for mathematical calculations and could be the size of a classroom. IBM later started using mainframes - a large smart computer to which dumb clients connected.

Answer by  Karthon (403)

The earliest computers in the 1950s were built from vacuum tubes. These tubes would use magnetic fields to amplify or reduce electrons in the near vacuums to do binary processing.