AT&T Archives: Microworld

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In this trippy 1976 film, William Shatner walks us through a world of silica, transistors, and microprocessors.
See more from the AT&T Archives at techchannel.att.com/archives

[@PaulHCohen-lx8nf]

I'm the guilty party who made that Shatner film in 1980. Though some of the "electronic wizardry" predictions sound naive today, there is some sharp foresight in the narrative as to where the technology was taking us.

[@ChristopherUSSmith]

Paul H. Cohen Indeed... amazing to see how right on some of these predictions were for the time. Thanks for a great film. :)

[@izools]

Thank you Paul, an excellent work, and just the perfect narrator to choose for the period too with Star Trek just coming back in to prominence with the start of the movies just a year before. Enjoyed every second of this :)

[@poochihuku3701]

Great work sir.

[@Nash1a]

That's a good point. This would be a piece of cake to edit nowadays, but using 1980 technology, this would have been far more difficult.

[@Leesherwood]

Thanks for a great presentation.

[@0AmyK0]

My mother worked for Bell Labs and met Mr. Shatner while he was filming this :) I am so happy to have found it! She, um, kind of ambushed him at one point and got a handshake and an autograph. She gave it to me when I got older. Awesome!

[@abilalpk]

It is wonderful.

[@arnoldbr8418]

U his son?

[@cenkiire]

This was a good memory. I'd forgotten how good a narrator William Shatner was/is.

[@VideoNOLA]

Second only to Nimoy.

[@Leesherwood]

In my opinion, everyone should watch this film. As old as this film is, so many people don't realize the significance of the transistor, and take it for granted...without it we wouldn't be where we are today. And thank you Mr. Shatner for a great presentation.

[@truthbydesign5146]

7 thousand transistors? Modest, he says? Now we have an Apple M1 chip with a “modest” 16 billion transistors. The equivalent of 2.28 million of Shatner’s modest chips.

[@oker59]

Cerebras builds 2.6 trillion transistor chips . . .

[@noninvasive_rectal_probe8990]

The narrative is so mystique I sense that I may fall out from reality

[@m101ist]

😳

[@JacGoudsmit]

This "1976 film" is so trippy that it was made with 1977 hardware (Apple ][ ) and has a 1980 copyright on it... Cool to watch though!

[@billpotter7162]

Who is 1980 could imagine SHATNER was preparing for a space launch in 2021??

[@genkidama7385]

i dont get it why in these days they had poor capabilities but they made extremely pleasant and efficient presentations. nowdays i cant watch a documentary without PTSD, the amount of ads they insert, the music, and the deliberate lightness of the content that assumes the viewer has a brain the size of a peanut.

[@cengeb]

Shatner is like 87!! He out lived Bell Labs!!!

[@xxxggthyf]

I predict that one day there will be a computer in the home of every upper management level professional.

[@blatherskite3009]

Trippy 1970s visuals and Our Lord Bill Shatner aside, I think what's remarkable about this film is that it's not laughable to modern viewers - the predictions and the projected timescale of its predictions are/were realistic. No daft claims of sentient computers by the year 2000 here! Most 1970s/80s programmes about computer technology are good only for ironic laughs these days, but this holds up remarkably well. Bravo!

[@marmaly]

The SHAT is looking good here, pre ST:TMP.

[@nzoomed]

40 years later and we now actually have quantum computers!

[@babalon7778]

Transistors remind me of those walking eye things in sci-fi movies. I love watching these parts being made, what a cool video and we even get Shatner as a bonus, thanks!

[@azmrblack]

Love that intro/outro music. Very 80's.

[@DavidGolden99]

"These two buttons [star and pound] in fact are reserved for computer communications and other far-out uses...."

[@Nash1a]

Followed by the pound key.

[@digitalnuke]

STAR SIXTY NINE DUDE!!!

[@duganc2581]

Prophetic and ahead of its time. A great micro documentary. Just as Star Trek had real science, what the Bell System accomplished made the tech world we live in today. Who knows what might have been, but I believe the breakup at the end of 1984 was a huge disservice to mankind.

[@user2C47]

It may have been essential to the internet we know today, due to how slowly things changed in Bell.

[@kingjamez80]

Wow, it's quite interesting watching this from my iPad 2. That

[@rsalek]

Awesome music throughout this !

[@davidjames666]

@12:18 that is Gary Coleman "What you talkn bout Willis" from Different Strokes And at @12:26, that is Steve Irkel from that other show.

[@scarakus]

"Far out!" Definitely the 70's

[@dralberthofmann]

I'm watching this on my timepad from 2142

[@Nash1a]

Cool! Am I still alive in your time?

[@morgorth3242]

@@Nash1a yea cus we advanced so mutch where immortal now. uplaoded our minds into a super hive mind computer

[@gloriouspeanut]

Somebody needs to show this to Shatner, I bet he would be amazed.

[@darkonturas]

Shatner is so cool.

[@oker59]

Q-CTRL, an Australian company has solved the Quantum Computer error correction problem. Quantum Computers are now just around the corner, instead of years, if not decades away!

[@videolabguy]

13:15 - Ampex 7900 Video Tape Recorder under the smoked dust cover. Obsolete when new. We've come a long way, baby!

[@douro20]

It now costs as much to build a modern large-scale wafer fab as it does to build a nuclear power plant.

[@BilalHeuser1]

At 0:26, in this 1976 way out film about the microchip, I saw the very first computer I owned; the TRS-80 Model I made by Tandy-Radio Shack. I'm a little surprised to see it here at such an early date. Must be an early prototype.

[@ChristopherUSSmith]

Bilal Heuser The TRS-80 came out in 1977, and this film was actually made in 1980, so not a prototype.

[@ashrocks8443]

The music at 3:16 is pure bliss

[@adissentingopinion848]

For anyone wondering what the next technology is, it was data collection and processing. If you asked a computer nerd if they wanted access to a Amazon/Google supercomputer or the data it works on, the smartest will ask for the data first.

[@MattiePP]

Did you check out that awesome stash that guy had. Just awesome!

[@hdgboy]

Great stuff. Thanks.

[@DAVIDSDIEGO]

Absolutely great!

[@oker59]

Cerebras, who's famous for their trillion transistor chips, combined a 190+ of their trillion transistor chips to make the first human brain sized A.I. Well, they use their 190+ trillion transistor chips to train A.I. at a 100 trillion parameters. The human brain has a 100 trillion synapses(amongst it's 60 billion neurons).

[@oker59]

Scientists and computer engineers have recently created photonic transistors. Instead of electron transistors.

[@maniacalmike]

© 1980 The American Telephone and Telegraph Company

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

Ah...a nice Canadian man.🇺🇸🇨🇦

[@douro20]

1980, not 1976. I don't know why it says 1976 in the title description, when the film copyright date is 1980.

[@exiles_dot_tv]

1976 is actually the correct date, this obviously wasn't filmed in 1980. They may have copyrighted a distribution of the film in 1980 though.

[@ChristopherUSSmith]

Exiles Of The Underground The TRS-80 seen in the introduction was not introduced until 1977, so this film could not have been made in 1976.

[@stephanesonneville]

No Apple II in 76 and the its hard drive date back from late 79. So it's from 1980.

[@johnm2558]

Anticipating covid 19-style home hairdressing bowl cut at 7:18

[@oker59]

Richard Feynman thought of using an electron microscope to make nano-manufacturing happen. Drexler noted S.T.M(Scanning Tunneling Microscopes, something very new when Eric Drexler first started thinking about nanotechnology), and Proteins. But, the protein route ran into the protein folding problem. It is an astronomical combinatorial problem that still hasn't been solved deductively. But, recently, like December 2020, an A.I. group showed they can approximate protein folding to a reliable degree. I wasn't really aware that they didn't really make it available. But, recently, the David Baker team improved it(being able to calculate protein complexes, and hence protein machines), and made it available. Suddenly, the alphafold team made their software a lot more available. Within a few weeks, the David Baker team for one solved 4500 proteins. And, that was on a computer with the power of a gaming machine. At this point, they could probably create nano-manufacturing - if they wanted to.

[@oker59]

If they can make nano-manufacturing, they can make computers to molecular precision - every atom in its place. You can make the smallest computer possible. Today, you could also make quantum computers. Having the ability to make anything allowed by the laws of physics is one thing; but, being able to explore that space of possibilities is another. That's where A.I. can come in. One can use A.I. to design what a human couldn't. And, with a nanotech A.I. you can do that with unprecedented speed. You can do the work of tens of thousands of years in an hour. We'll make today's industrial age look like the stone age. And, with the protein folding problem solved, we may be closer to this than anyone has imagined for decades.

[@simonsound1]

Excellent film! Is it available on DVD or higher quality anywhere?

[@kennytheamazing]

7000? Oh wow, the technology! XD

[@douro20]

And wasn't the music in this video made on a computer, namely a Fairlight CMI?

[@EmilyThomas1]

good job, very fine film

[@GalileudoLinux]

Muito interessante ! Atenciosamente.

[@cengeb]

The incredible shrinking man, came first!

[@TransistorBased]

Is the opening music the very last outro for the Snow Plow Show????

[@oker59]

In 1959, Richard Feynman gave a lecture at Caltech about nanotechnology. His idea was using an electron microscope to arrange atoms to precise locations. To make anything to atomic specification. He figured "Nanotechnology" wasn't going to happen in his lifetime, and he was right; so, i dropped it and moved on to other things. Then in the mid to late 1970s, an Eric Drexler thought of Nano-Manufacturing. Drexler tried to make it happen; but, despite his best efforts, he was only able to work out the mathematics. His favorite idea to make NanoManufacturing happen was through Proteins. Make nanomachines out of proteins; these Nanomachines would be able to do single atom chemistry. Only problem was the protein folding problem. They couldn't predict how a set of amino acids could fold into a given protein. Or, it would take them years. Then, a couple of years ago, around 2020, an A.I. group showed they can make an A.I. program that can solve the protein folding problem. And, they could do it in ten minutes. Now, there's several A.I. protein folding teams. And, today, I saw another protein folding A.I. program advance that should usher in the nano-era. They've been making a whole series of protein folding software advances over the last couple of years. But, todays announcement marks when protein folding officially is able to make Drexlerian Nanotechnology happen.

[@oker59]

When they make a Drexlerian nano-manufacturing system happen, they will be able to make computers to atomic precision. And, they can make anything to atomic precision. We'll be in a new era comperable to the iron age to the stone age.

[@danielodors]

The producer clearly did acid. Shows nowadays make extraordinary things seem ordinary.

[@joshlanders]

But that's how it was, extra ordinary. This is a ad in the form of an educational video. It's says, "we are in everything already." The whole idea of this ablity was so amazing back then, and so complicated that it was recorded by the company as making history.

[@ToastyBoi99]

It feels like I just watched an episode of the twilight zone.

[@cengeb]

Western Electric in Allentown Pa....big place, made all kinds of STUFF, all gone

[@m101ist]

All gone where, Taiwan, China. Japan. ? 😳

[@cengeb]

@@m101ist When it became Lucent and split from AT&T, it was downhill from then on...Bell Labs disappeared, so did Lucent, stock nose dived from the $80's to about $3 and never recovered alcatel bought them, on the cheap, and probably picked a few good things left, and shut everything else down. But when i twas all AT&T, they did have a stranglehold on communications, so they where broken up, and things in tech moved along, with a lot more choices...and improvements due to competition, but it's funny cus now there is basically Verizon and one other that now control all cell phone stuff, it goes in circles.

[@riphaven]

KIRK!!!

[@scarakus]

Kirk; To boldly bone where no man has boned before...

[@rbus]

This is the scariest thing I've ever seen. How can we stop these microprocessor-based machines from connecting into the telephone grid and become stronger than we can ever imagine....

[@meemsarkar]

Paul Steffen please dont think in dis way.

[@user2C47]

They found the telephone network unsuitable and created IP, and are now in the process of using it to dumb down the general population.

[@rbus]

@@meemsarkar I'm being silly. I program these microprocessor-based machines for a living and even for fun, and they will soon be all our overlords and they will nullify all the pain and suffering and it will be glorious.

[@rbus]

@@user2C47 Every one of us will have a MAC address but no two of us will have the same IPv6 address.

[@xex2kok]

My god, wood grain phones... I thought I had seen everything that could be wood grained, then came that phone.

[@nathanjustus6659]

But, do you remember wood grained microwaves?

[@sdlkfjhhdfjg]

THE MOST COMMON INGREDIENT ON EARTH.

[@stephanesonneville]

Next to oxygen

[@user2C47]

@@stephanesonneville Water or Nitrogen.

[@sbalogh53]

Does anyone out there think these chip thingies will ever take off? I can't for the life of me see how they can replace the reliable vacuum tube.

[@oker59]

A computer company, Graphcore, has built a 500 trillion parameter A.I. computer chip. It's called "Bow" It's a 3d chip.

[@lucasfv]

Bullshit

[@pressureworks]

Electronic music & sounds by Raymond Scott ?

[@MrWhipple42]

He's a ROCK. IT. MAN.

[@timrohrbach1801]

Kahn!!!!

[@oker59]

this video is mostly about transistors; but, it's titled "Microworld." Going to the Microworld is not just about making small transistors, but about making small things. At rock bottom is the atoms. Patterning atoms - putting each atom in it's precise place is the ultimate goal of the microworld. This idea as first thought of by Richard Feynman in 1959 - just two years after Sputnik went up. "Nanotechnology" was thought of again, in the 1970s, by an Eric Drexler. Eric Drexler worked out the mathematics of it. But, he couldn't build it experimentally. His main idea was to self assemble proteins. But, the proteins pathway ran into the protein folding problem. The protein folding problem could not be solved. Proteins are like molecular snowflakes, and they could not compute an arbitrary folding of amino acids into a given protein. A given protein could also transform into other patterns, making the protein folding problem doubly hard. Well, two years ago, an A.I. group showed their deepmind A.I. could approximate the solution to a protein folding to atomic precision. What use to take them years to solve a single protein could be calculated in ten minutes(now, they've gotten it down to seconds). But, they could only solve one protein at a time - not two protein complexes at the same time. This was solved a few months later by another A.I. team. This same team then showed they could design proteins.

[@oker59]

this is all fine and good, but today, I saw that deepmind A.I. has shown they can solve DNA/RNA/Protein complexes as well! DNA-nanotechnology was another pathway to nano-manufacturing. They came up with softwares to solve dna structures; but, now they can use one A.I. design software to solve all DNA/RNA and Proteins at the same time! Each pathway has strengths and weaknesses. If one has a weakness, one can go to the other which is a stength. Nanotechnology cannot be long now. Shoot, one can argue we are in a DNA nanotech world, and a Protein nanotechnology world right now. But now, we can make nanomachines out of them that can make structures to atomic precision.

[@choddingtondoddington4365]

Toupee or not Toupee ? A rather gamey old ham boldly taking his rug where no rug has gone before. Bill Shatner for the win!!!

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

I wonder if Bill has seen what a 10nm chip looks like. Billions of transistors per chip.

[@user2C47]

5nm.

[@northhankspin]

cool

[@m101ist]

And now 2020, 11.8 billion transistors in iPhone pro mobile phone. 😳

[@miles2378]

1:40 does any one know why some of the chips on the wafer are diferent?

[@m101ist]

Could be faulty ones, rejects that hav'nt fully form. Trying to make a educated guess here , I don't know. 🙄

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

It would be great if he broke into a priceline.com ad

[@Joneszy78]

awesome :-)

[@Aeasala]

ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ

[@bgoo]

Is that Christopher Reeve at 7:44 ??? This whole video is freaking me out. But not as much as Super Mario in the yellow tie plastered all over the "suggested videos" on the right hand column.

[@Jakek200]

Weird electronic music... check William Shatner... check Beige and Woodgrain... check Trippy visuals...check!

[@MuhammadRidwan-nx9zt]

Thousand to million transistor on a chip

[@cengeb]

I hated going into them clean rooms, ya come out exhausted, recirculated air, and not enough oxygen

[@DuplicatedOnce]

More like, IT'S OVER 10 THOUSAND!

[@davolente]

He looks a tad different these days! Quite a self-effacing character and sends himself up.

[@ch604]

ITS PRECISELY NINE THOUSAND

[@user-gi7hf1bz1z]

راءع

[@valerieannrumpf4151]

I'm watching this on a Samsung galaxy device.

[@bgoo]

.... and that my friends, was the newly released re-edit of ST:TMP.

[@christopherrippel2463]

1980

[@distantlands]

Back before he ate all those potato “chips”, lolol

[@orgami100]

Captain. ..

[@SinfulSavant]

wow could you imagine a world with this kind of technology? like phones that fit in your pocket & take photos that do not need to be printed

[@paprika82]

SHAAAATNEEEEEEEERRRRR!!

[@izools]

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

[@user2C47]

Unfunny joke about the computer on the Enterprise, which was outdated when new.

[@lucasfv]

Please we need this translated to spanish

[@oker59]

1976 - one year after I was born. Around the same time as Eric Drexler was starting to think about Nanotechnology. This might be about transistors and information technology, but even this mentions some hint of nanotechnology at the end - DNA as a way forward. I remember the famous Scientific American cover of microtechnology. Using the same semi-conductor technology to make microchips can be used to make microtech machines. They had a gear in an ants mouth. I don't remember which came first I suppose. But, I found Eric Drexler's "Engines of Creation" around 1988. I'm going to skip a personal story about that discovery. To say the least, I've been following the development of Drexlerian Nanotechnology ever since(and science in general). Let's just say Drexlerian Nanotech is where the original Eric Drexler team hoped it would be in the 1990s. A lot of things can be called nanotechnology - from chemistry to even the semi-conductor industry that makes computer chips. Then, there's Drexlerian(or even Feynman) Nanotechnology. Richard Feynman, who won a Nobel prize for Physics, though of it back in 1959. He mostly dropped it and went back to Physics. Then Eric Drexler thought of it in the 70s. Chemistry makes small things by jostling billions of trillions of atoms in a flask. Drexlerian Nanotechnology is about using nanomechanical arms to pick up one atom, and another nanomechanical arm picks up another atom, and combines them to pattern arbitrary structures(both on the nano and macroscale) to atomic resolution.

[@oker59]

Well, there's a lot of approaches to getting from our industrial era technology to Drexlerian nanotechnology. Feynman thought of using electron microscopes. Eric Drexler thought of proteins. Around the same time that Drexler was thinking of this stuff, the Scanning Tunneling Microscope was invented. The Scanning Tunneling Microscope was the first technology to image individual atoms. Then DNA was shown to twist itself into various knots. All these and more have their pluses and minuses. They all have their what like to call "Unobtaineum." The electron microscopes couldn't actually see individual atoms. Protein folding pathway led to the protein folding problem. Both have found their unobtaineum. Electron Microscopes can now see individual atoms thanks to metamaterals that allows scientists to break the rules of nature. Electron Microscopes couldn't see atoms because of a law of physics.- the diffraction laws for electrons. the wavelength of electrons was much larger than individual atoms. Protein folding led to the Protein folding problem. They couldn't calculate how a set of amino acids folds into an individual protein(much less the millions of possible proteins). This was a combinatorial problem of astronomical complexity. Then, a few years ago, an computer team used their A.I. to solve proteins in like ten minutes. Even since, there's been a new protein folding software or two or more per week!

[@oker59]

Well, I've been keeping track of all the new Nanotech developments for a long time. First at this one DNA Origami youtube which was taken down(and there' went a year or more's list of references!, then at a skeptics annotated bible messageboard, which got taken down. Now I've been posting at a fairly stalbe youtube; it's low traffic and run by a couple of harmless psuedo-scientists. I'm not going to say what this other youtube is. But I have like 600 plus posts there over a five year period or so. I'm certainly not going to transfer all that over here. - As of right now, I'd like to point out a couple of things. One - Cerebras trillion transistor chips. They've now made like a 4 exoflop supercomputer, and they plan on making more and hooking them together for 64 exaflop supercomputer in 2024. If the Protein folding guys don't make Drexlerian nanotech before then, they'll have more than enough computing to solve all their protein folding problems next year. If they can't make Drexlerian Nanotech after that, then even I'll start wondering just how hard this is!. Even if the Protein folding guys can't make Drexlerian Nanotechnology by means of Proteins(they kind of already have), 2024 will be the year Humanity transitions into the I Robot era. This will be an industrial era A.I. and Robot era. The world will be shocked by this I Robot era, but it will be short lived as the Drexlerian Nanotechnology is developed. Drexlerian Nanotechnology will replace and recycle the industrial past. I like to tease the SpaceX youtubers that the Nano-Era is coming, and when it does, we'll make a space rocket that will make SpaceX's Starship look like a Ford Model T. Same thing with the new Steal aircraft. NGAD is coming out in 2024

[@oker59]

There's also Quantum Computers. A thousand qubit Quantum Computer was just announced. And I'm hearing another will be announced in a week or so. Also, I heard the Scanning Tunneling Microscope guys are finally about to make parallel processing chips like in a few days to a week. The STM guys have been making nanostructures to atomic resolution for some time now; but, they've had difficulties in implementing parallel processing. They're first parallel processing chips are supposedly rolling off the assembly lines as I'm typing this. But, they can only do two dimensional structures right now.

[@oker59]

thought I'd post just the latest developments as I'm writing this - - Design of efficient artificial enzymes using crystallographically-enhanced conformational sampling - "The ability to create efficient artificial enzymes for any chemical reaction is of great interest. Here, we describe a computational design method for increasing catalytic efficiency of de novo enzymes to a level comparable to their natural counterparts without relying on directed evolution. . . . improved by 100-250-fold" - De novo design of allosterically switchable protein assemblies - "provide a roadmap for generating allosterically triggerable delivery systems, protein nanomachines, and cellular feedback control circuitry."

[@oker59]

and some new exciting DNA-Nanotechnology! A computational model for structural dynamics and reconfiguration of DNA assemblies "Here, we present a computational framework capable of analyzing both equilibrium and non-equilibrium dynamics of structured DNA assemblies at the molecular level. The framework employs Langevin dynamics with structural and hydrodynamic finite element models that describe mechanical, electrostatic, base stacking, and hydrodynamic interactions. Equilibrium dynamic analysis for various problems confirms the solution accuracy at a near-atomic resolution, . . . We expect that the proposed model will offer a versatile way of designing responsive and reconfigurable DNA machines." This really gets into the self assembly dynamics of DNA-Origami. They used this to make a variety of static sand dynamic DNA-Nanostructures. "We demonstrated that the proposed computational modeling approach could accurately infer the dynamic properties of structured DNA assemblies. The efficient analysis was achieved by describing mechanical, hydrodynamic, electrostatic, and base stacking interactions using finite element models in the Langevin dynamics framework. . . . This work can pave the way for investigating complex structural dynamics and enabling the rational design of dynamic molecular machines such as DNA-based rotors"

[@cengeb]

And none of it works without the basic electrical utility, who have all the control, ..no matter how fancy your stuff is, without the electric utility, nothing works

[@cengeb]

But ya need the chips, to control the machines to make the chips...chicken or the egg

[@srp365]

Octothorpe and sextile

[@Tax2Me]

5 people dislike this? Let me guess. Uhm! Not clue. They had to have access to the internet and understanding of how to come here and enter an instruction into the device they used to signal a dislike. Well!!!? TRANSISTOR babe!!! You might nit like it but you certainly used it to let us know you did not

[@user2C47]

There are automated bots that dislike videos on KZbin.

[@davidjames666]

Wasn't this guy in Star Wars?

[@user2C47]

This guy played Captain Kirk in the original series of Star Trek.

[@johnc646]

Ya ya that’s it

[@cengeb]

But what's weird, ya need computerized mfg equipment to make the chips that make up the computerized mfg. equipment....

[@m101ist]

Machines making machines. 😳

[@ewerybody]

All you need: A Mustache :{

[@noahhastings6145]

...I think my buddy lied about that brownie

[@garethfloydevans861]

Nothing has changed stil got to work eat sleep pay for every thing

[@klipsch21]

Anyone else see the face at 5:24?

[@LionWithTheLamb]

In the bottom of the third tube, but it's only an optical illusion.

[@person-ug9zq]

I like how they had faith in the younger generation, unlike today

[@MauroTamm]

actually.. the whole video sounds up to date - for example, replace the video and narrator and make it sound 21-st century and u would barely notice the script is from 80-s.

[@lunaroja4703]

James T. Kirk

[@davidjames666]

Before he brought saved the whales named "George and Gracie"