Digital Computer Techniques: Programming (1962) - AT&T Archives

See more from the AT&T Archives at techchannel.att.com/archives
Though not produced by AT&T, this film was part of the Bell Labs film library, a resource utilized by Labs engineers. It was produced by the U.S. Navy in the 1960s as a basic primer on computers and how they worked.
Programming is part 5 of 5; it covers the essentials of programming, on a fundamental level. The Navy was ahead of its time in terms of integrating computers into many functions, early on in the 1940s and 1950s. There is an excellent article on this subject in Today's Engineer from 2012.
Digital Computer Techniques was a 5-part film series introduction to the essential elements of computers and computing. The series was made by Audio Productions, Inc., a company that made also made other films for the Bell System. Here's what the entire series consisted of at the time:
Digital Computer Techniques: Introduction
Digital Computer Techniques: Computer Logic Part I
Digital Computer Techniques: Computer Logic Part II, Symbology (also called "Logic Element Circuits")
Digital Computer Techniques: Computer Units
Digital Computer Techniques: Programming (this film)
Footage Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

[@nrdesign1991]

Those films may be outdated, but you can still learn a lot from them. Thank you for putting them up for free!

[@MichaelVLang]

These old films are so good, clear and concise. Thank you for uploading them!

[@stevebez2767]

Michael Lang current Sea?

[@ylluminarious151]

These old films do a better job at explaining computers to the common man than most of today's modern material.

[@Fuzy2K]

"Alright guys and gals, Jim here with the US Navy and today we're gonna learn about computer programs, but first let me give a shoutout to our sponsor Wix, whose services are really awesome...."

[@tomservo5007]

fuzy2k, flow charts aren't used anymore, unless you count uml diagrams. Or at least in my domain.

[@pfefferfilm]

@@tomservo5007 No, but the use of flow charts can help someone with logical training but no computer training how to begin learning computer languages

[@tommyhatcher3399]

That's because everything is standardized these days. Even instruction manuals. Back in the day they'd write the book the best way they can to explain the subject. These days it's style over substance and one manual size fits all.

[@playswithlife]

Would LOVE to see the whole series!

[@GBlunted]

This is so tight... no monitor or screens listed as outputs, programming assembly level code, the low level management of addresses, no mention of a stack...

[@robertwolfiii8711]

Thanks again

[@jaworskij]

In the early 1980s we had to draw by hand the programming symbols on computer printout paper or our notebooks. I feel jipped.

[@magnuswootton7368]

sounds exciting!

[@yussef961]

yeah i was too young the first computer i knew had 64kbytes of ram, but if you are talking about while etc being a symbol i knew that.. i always had a launcher though , i never had to allocate memory manually to run a program..

[@robsemail]

I took courses in Fortran, Cobol and Basic in the 1980s and we definitely had to write a lot of flow charts, especially in my Fortran class. Fortran was very complicated, and at first it was really hard to understand why anyone would have ever tried to write business software, like sales, payroll and other accounting functions, using Fortran. Fortran is most suited to science. For business you need a fair bit of code just to keep the numbers limited to two decimal places. If you didn’t always keep this in mind and code your instructions accordingly, you’d end up with ledgers out of balance. Over time I came to appreciate Fortran for its readability over Cobol. Cobol looks a lot more like English language, and in some ways it’s simpler, but it’s so wordy that you have to read long sections just to understand a small amount of what’s it’s doing. With Fortran, just reading a few lines can tell you a lot. I guess a lot of Fortran business software was written before Cobol was commonly available, and that software was still being updated in the 1980s.

[@WAQWBrentwood]

Damn, press the "Start button" Even in 1962 it was better than Win8

[@simonbyrd6518]

"You can start me up, start me up, I'll never stop ♫"

[@montyoso]

Please upload more.

[@koob1413]

LOVE this!!!!!!!!

[@Rushmore222]

The flow chart symbology has since been replaced by frantically written freehand unreadable text and the flow chart paper replaced with a napkin.

[@anthonybarnard3527]

nothing has changed "the more things change the more they stay the same"

[@markproulx1472]

People may snicker at this, but the phone in your hand only exists because of this history. We are in their debt.

[@grassyclimer6853]

notice 2000 is missing from the instructions lol.

[@stanrogers5613]

Zero-indexing wasn't normal in the early years; people started counting from one, the same way people always had. Counting from zero is mostly a compiler convenience that makes computing addresses from array pointer offsets a much less expensive operation. The only reason it's normal now is because people got used to using it when memory was measured in kilobytes/kilowords - there's no good _technical_ reason to use zero-indexing anymore, it's just a convention. (And a bad one that makes programming harder to learn and causes all sorts of off-by-one errors.)

[@johneygd]

It’s mind blowing how a dummy device extended our mind and capabilities, we rely more on these machines, these dummy machines even makes us more lazy these days.

[@rogerszeto8419]

Technically, illuminated

[@thesteelrodent1796]

never considered that those old machines required doing things more complicated than Assembly

[@Gravitytent]

Damn what programming language is that?

[@WAQWBrentwood]

In '62 if not actual machine code (or assembly) likely FORTRAN or COBOL.

[@ChristopherUSSmith]

Based on the instructions used, it looks like the A-0 System, that Grace Hopper developed. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_System

[@robertmaclean7070]

@JESSE MAYOTTE I think you mean Fortran, Formula Translation.

[@stevebez2767]

Aaaaah EDC Quirk Qwerty! No escape!

[@pieluvr7362]

If you know you know

[@ThunderAppeal]

If logic, math and computers were truly interrelated computers wouldnt need an ALU

[@attofcomputer1404]

#attofcomputer

[@yussef961]

the principles are the same.

[@yussef961]

@@jatre5938 no needs seems your brain 🧠 is damaged enough already