Quote:
Originally Posted by tjf
Though I understand where you're coming from, I meant in terms of computer technology combined with mechanics. The Apollo Guidance Computer, for example, ran at 2.048 MHz and had a memory size measured in words, not bytes.
And similarly along the automobile note.
I definitely should have explained myself better, but edit rules can make one forget.
Tim, KD2KRT.
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By the 1970s the PDP-11 was controlling automation in the Mark 1 nuclear reactors for GE (think Fukushima Daiichi). Till 2050 the PDP-11 will continue to provide that function in those reactors. DEC/Digital made something so stable it has outlived their engineers.
I occassionally get requests for support because my first computer was an $80k PDP-11 we bought for a project with IT&T. I am forty years old. My first computer was available to me by age 5.
So roughly a decade later is just a stones throw.
Plus there were R/C airplanes, cars, boats and I have magazines from the 1960s with model train controls made with vacuum tubes.
The actual foresight here is to see it get: smaller, faster, more accessible.
There are parts of the Sage defense computers that took up a city block that exist in the 80386 processor on a silicon chip in the 1990s.
I have always believed that the nuance that high school students can use this technology is not very factual. That age bracket has for a thousand or more years been the mark of the advancement of their generation. As it should be: they will soon be the adults with a world of issues and responsibilities. If we can send them to fight wars, we should expect them to rise to the challenge.
Where FIRST excels is giving opportunity to decades of students to demonstrate prowess without suggesting they simply are not ready to try.