What is a computer
I really enjoyed watching this series a while back by Ben Eater:
“Building an 8-bit Breadboard Computer”
It explains a lot of the steps in the rocks-to-computer pipeline in detail. It assumes decent familiarity with electronics fundamentals, though. So maybe not the best starting point.
Computers can’t think, they are just calculators on steroids…
Cunk on Earth
There is a game called Turing complete where you start with simple logic gates and you start building upwards from there. Then you’re only missing the part where you build transistors from silicone wafers.
“Halt and Catch Fire” was pretty good!
From Wikipedia:
It depicts a fictionalized insider’s view of the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and the early days of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s.
Demons it’s all demons.
Before we used rocks to think we did it with vacuum, heat, and glass. At the time we did have some very very basic thinking rocks with primitive semiconductor diodes made from lead and sulfur.
Also how debugging got its name, because bugs would get into the vacuum tubes
Edit: I did some digging and found what’s claimed to be the actual “de-bugging”. Turns out it wasn’t as widespread as my memory made it out to be.
Wouldn’t really be vacuum if they could get in though
Very true. I got more curious and found this discussion trying to trace “debug.”
This is a classic.
Shows how changes cause more changes and interactions. For instance; coffee is imported into England;coffee shops in London were a popular place to do business before modern office building came around; investors began looking for ways to make the ships they were bankrolling safer; pine tar was a great way to keep ships watertight…
https://youtu.be/XetplHcM7aQ?list=PLf02uWXhaGRng_YzH-Ser_VEV4lGSLX_1
Hidden Figures. Not quite what you want, but pretty close. The Imitation Game is also worth a watch.
edit: Sorry. I misunderstood your question. It’s late and I read it as you asking for movies about early computing, not actually explanatory videos.
Depending on how much you know already, the Crash Course Computer Science videos are an excellent place to start. It’s obviously an intro course but, like most Crash Course stuff, it does a good job of explaining the basics and also giving a bit of context and history.
We shot it with a lightning bolt and then some weird sh*t started happening. /s.
