Mainframes and the Unix Revolution - Computerphile

Back in the 70's, college students would play a kind of game where they would load several programs into a mainframe (we used an IBM 360) and whoever took over the entire memory would win. There were some programs that tried to attack other programs, but we soon found out that a tiny program that made copies of itself as fast as possible would fill the memory and crash anything else running. We didn't know it then, but we were essentially writing computer viruses.

I think having this testimony of the begginings of computer science in high quality, on Youtube, is really important and has a great historical value. Thanks Brady and Computerphile. That's great work you're doing.

Great narrator. I bet this guy's grandkids love it when he reads books to them and tells them stories.

Fascinating stuff. Could listen to Professor Brailsford all day.

The clarity of this man is remarkable.

3:40.... WTF!!! does anyone else hear him swearing? "So, i can get the fucking cover off, and put it into my top loading washing machine!" Love this guy.

Please see the 'behind the scenes' film as linked in the description to hear Professor Brailsford talk about this >Sean

I was born in the 90s and I find early computers fascinating.

Wow, I lived this history and it is amazing to me how things were in the '70's and how much they have changed. I began in California writing FORTRAN in collegein 1969, did an MS in Geology from Stanford using a mainframe and a dumb terminal to run a teaching model of 2D gravity models in the earth's crust in 1973. When I went to US Geol. Survey in 1976 after a couple of years I beban trying to sell UNIX to them and failed. I remember using a PDP-11/34 with RL01 2 MB disks running BDS UNIX in about 1978 and writing my first C program. about that time USGS began adopting UNIX. It wasn't until 1986, though that I had my first real exposure to UNIX as a full-time user and system-admin and programmer and later with Sun in about 1988. Then in the '90's I did Sun administration on SunOs 4,1 and later Solaris 5 to 9. I saw my first Linux in 1995 and run it on an IBM PS/2 with 16 mb of ram. What I remember is that I made it look pretty much like what I had at work under Solaris 5 because both ran FVWM. But to say that UNIX can run in small systems, I remember in 1980 installing a 10 MB UNIX on a friend's PC and later, a couple of years ago running a recent release of Ubuntu live off a DVD on a system I had that used to run Windows 2000 in 256 MB of ram. I had run recent Linix distros which were by no means small in 1/4 and 1/2 GB of ram within the past two years.

I used to write COBOL programs for our student admin and the library. The system was an ICL1904 running George III and we were privileged in that we had 3 "glass terminals" reserved for programmers. If all the glass terminals were in use we could use one of the older old ASR-33 teletypes in another room. However, most of our work was still done using decks of cards and line printer output. That computer was still in use up to the mid-1980s. I think that disk platter might have been an EDS-80? 5:31 We used those! ADM-3A terminals connected to the ICL. We only had ONE in the programmer's room and you always had to wait to get on it.

14:50 This is why I love Computerphile. It's their give no fucks approach to editing that really sets them apart

I remember advising someone that a 20GB is a waste of money because you would just never use all of that capacity :)

Some great memories in this video. I worked for ICL in the building shown (Bracknell) as a diagnostician, writing patches for mainframe operating systems in assembler. I then moved onto Unix and in the late 1980s I designed & implemented the reliability trials software (written in C) for a new Unix server (DRS6000) we were manufacturing in our factory at Ashton, Manchester.

Interesting. I was working for Singer Business Machines when we were sold to ICL. The machine on which I was programming became the ICL 1500 and was made in Utica, NY, USA. All the programming I did was written in 1500 Assembler. I had originally learned programming on an IBM 360, also using IBM Assembler.

I was born the year the transistor was invented and watched this video on an Ubuntu (Linix) operated computer.  Thanks for the stroll down memory lane.

As someone born in 1981 and enamored with computers since the C64, Prof Brailsford is a national treasure. Please continue to interview him and let him speak (through howevermany tangents there may be) about the origins of Computer Science and publish everything he has to say. Modern programmers have much to learn from people that had to punch cards and edit on paper. Saving 15 minutes in an algorithm in 1965 translates to saving 10 minutes of battery life in a smart phone now.

I like professor Brailsford videos because they bring back so many memories. The first mini-computer I used was a PDP-8/e, where I programmed in assembler and FOCAL (a BASIC type language). Then I moved to VAX/VMS and UNIX/SunOS machines, and finally to Linux PC's, which I use at work today.

Professor Brailsford is a wonderful story teller. His narration and personal reflection on the past makes this video a fascinating ride through a historic frontier in computing.

Wow, I wish I had him as my Computer science lecturer.

That is an excellent interview. It is so nice to hear the memories and the personal view on the history of computing from the person who went through this all himself.