章 318: Chapter 395 Computers (2)

"Thank you all for your contributions to the empire; your achievements can be said to have opened the door to the third industrial revolution." The first industrial revolution was the steam technology revolution, the second was the electrical technology revolution, and the third is the computer and information technology revolution.

Wilhelm visited the computer research and development department in Area 51, shook hands with everyone, and personally awarded the Imperial Medal, representing the highest honor of the nation, to four individuals in charge. These four were John von Neumann, Konrad Zuse, Alan Turing, and Tommy Flowers. Wilhelm originally planned to recruit the Americans Mochly and Eckert, but unfortunately, they were uncooperative; both had perished a few years earlier in a fishing accident on a lake.

John von Neumann and Alan Turing need no further introduction; Konrad Zuse is posthumously known as the father of the digital computer, and the computer he invented is the famous Z series computer.

In the 1930s, Konrad Zuse worked as a structural design engineer at the Henschel aircraft factory while studying for a degree in civil engineering. Due to the increasing volume of engineering calculations, he was intent on designing and manufacturing a powerful computer suitable for engineering calculations. After a long period of exploration, research, and relentless effort, he invented a series of automatic computers named "Z," which he relied on to handle complex engineering calculation problems.

To make the machine more efficient, Zuse even designed a programming language, an achievement that placed him among the pioneers of computer languages.

Tommy Flowers was a British computer expert comparable to John von Neumann.

As mentioned earlier, ENIAC is known as the world's first electronic computer, but Britain also had a machine called "Colossus," which claimed to be the world's first electronic computer and appeared two years before ENIAC.

However, the number of tubes in the ENIAC computer was nearly ten times that of "Colossus"; "Colossus" was not a general-purpose computer and is generally considered to have been used for decrypting the German High Command's strategic encryption systems, while ENIAC had general computing features; of the 12 "Colossus" machines, 10 were immediately destroyed after the war, and the remaining two were also destroyed in the '60s, with not a single blueprint left; whereas ENIAC was known throughout the world.

Nevertheless, "Colossus" indeed made significant contributions to the war effort.

The Lorenz cipher machine was the main encryption device used for communication among the senior German military officers, including Hitler, during the latter part of World War II. Deciphering the codes encrypted by it was extremely difficult. Hitler believed until his death that the Lorenz cipher machine was invincible. The main purpose of the British development of the "Colossus" computer was to decrypt the codes encrypted by the Lorenz cipher machine. Using other methods to decrypt such codes would take 6 to 8 weeks, but using the 'Colossus' computer would only take 6 to 8 hours. Therefore, after it was put into use, a large number of senior German military secrets were quickly decrypted, greatly enhancing the Allied forces.

Dr. Tommy Flowers, the person in charge of the development of the "Colossus" computer, was also "lured" to Germany by Wilhelm a few years ago to serve Germany.

In addition to the medals, they were also eligible to receive a scientific prize established in the name of Dr. Albert.

The four were so moved that they were beyond words. Dr. John von Neumann was so excited that he was almost choked up. "This is all thanks to His Highness's wise leadership." His words were not mere flattery; during the development of the computer, Wilhelm helped them solve many difficult problems with his knowledge from the future, and they truly admired Wilhelm from the bottom of their hearts.

This is the advantage of being a time-traveler. For Wilhelm, simply taking out the most basic ideas from the future was enough to create new innovations, and they were definitely correct. Survival of the fittest; the wrong ideas had long since disappeared in the river of history.

After the award ceremony, the responsible persons demonstrated the operation of the first computer to Wilhelm.

Because the first computer in this timeline was mainly based on transistors, with vacuum tubes as a secondary component, its size was much smaller than the first computer in the original timeline, occupying only 20 square meters.

"Power on!" With Dr. John von Neumann's command, an assistant pressed the power button.

"Buzz!" The machine emitted a low roar as it started up.

"Stabilizer one, operating normally, power supply stable!"

"Stabilizer two, the voltage is very stable, with no changes..."

Turing and the other responsible persons operated the machine themselves, occasionally exchanging the values on the instruments.

The original timeline's first computer, ENIAC, included a control unit, high-speed memory, arithmetic unit, and input-output unit. It used decimal representation, and its arithmetic components could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root operations through direct counting rather than logic circuits. Its accumulator had the capability for addition operations and storage. The output used IBM's punch card machines, capable of inputting 125 cards per minute and outputting 100 cards. Input and output could overlap and had buffering capabilities. ENIAC also had a read-only memory (ROM), which, along with the accumulator and program panel, implemented program control by changing the panel's plug-in wires. ENIAC's basic circuits included "gates" (logical AND), buffers (logical OR), and flip-flops, which later became standard components in computers. Apart from not having the ability to store programs, it almost embodied or included all the main concepts and components of modern computers. ENIAC's main frequency was 100 kHz, with an addition time of 0.2 ms and a multiplication time of 2.8 ms.

After ENIAC, John von Neumann proposed significant improvements, mainly two points: one is that electronic computers should use binary as the basis for operations; the other is that electronic computers should work with "stored programs," and he further clarified that the entire computer structure should consist of five parts: the arithmetic unit, controller, memory, input device, and output device. The introduction of von Neumann's theories solved the problems of computational automation and speed coordination, playing a decisive role in the development of later computers. Until later generations, the majority of computers still worked in the von Neumann manner.

Although Wilhelm was not a programmer, he had written simple code like "hello world" and had a certain understanding of the principles of programming.

Programming is essentially telling the computer what to do. A computer is fundamentally a large number of small electronic switches that are either on or off. The principle of programming is to set different combinations of these switches to make the computer do something. The computer uses a simple language that contains only 1s and 0s, where 1 represents "on" and 0 represents "off". Trying to talk to a computer in its own language is like trying to talk to a friend using Morse code. Programming languages act as a translator between you and the computer.

Wilhelm explained the principles of programming to these people, and as experts in this field, they quickly grasped the meaning and developed the corresponding assembly language.