Home / Titles / Giant Brains (1/4)
Print Page

Giant Brains (1/4)


This is also part of this series: Machine that Changed the World, The (4)

PPR Price: $149
Site Price: $149
Home Price: N/A



» Request Preview Access
Subjects: Anthropology, History, Science, Technology

Grade Level: SrH-Adult
Producer: BBC
Closed Captioned: No		 Running Time: 50 mins
Country of Origin: Great Britain
Study Guide: No
Copyright Date: 1991
Available in French: No

Writing was invented 5000 years ago as a means of expanding our ability to communicate. The computer may come to rival the written word as a communication medium. 

Most machines are special purpose, that is they are designed to do only one thing. Computers, on the other hand, are universal machines. They can transform themselves into a variety of other machines through the use of software. As a result the computer is a uniquely versatile machine.This universal character of computers allows us to describe their functioning as: the manipulation of ideas, the creation of artificial universes and mind-like.In general, computers perform tasks that in humans requires intelligence to accomplish.

Originally, computers were invented to provide a fast and effective means of performing arithmetic.  

Giant Brains (1/4)

Writing was invented 5000 years ago as a means of expanding our...

Inventing the Future (2/4)

Part two of history of computers looks at how pioneers failed at...

Paperback Computer, The (3/4)

Scribes of the Middle Ages pioneered a medium that became the...

Thinking Machine, The (4/4)

How are people different from computers? Can computers think? The...