How was the first computer programmed? With what? How does it know 1 means yes and 0 means no?
In: Technology
On a physical level, computers use something called “logic gates” to do calculation.
Originally they were constructed out of vacuum tubes, but modern ones are etched into silicon wafers by the billions, and those wafers go into CPU’s/Processors.
There are a few different types of logic gates, but each has 2 inputs and an output. If they receive the proper inputs they allow electricity through, which is interpreted as a 1, and if not they don’t let electricity through which is interpreted as a 0.
For example, the AND gate : If input 1 AND input 2 both receive an electrical current then the electrons can make it out the other end, which is seen as a 1.
If one of the inputs gets a current but the other doesn’t, or if neither gets a current, then nothing comes out the other end, which is seen as a 0.
There’s the OR gate which outputs a 1 if either input receives a current, as well as the XOR(Exclusive OR) which outputs a 1 if one of the inputs gets a current but not if both do.
There’s a few others, but the basic idea is that you can chain the outputs of one gate to the inputs of other gates to create a representation of logic you want the computer to execute.
The first “programming language” was chaining vacuum tubes together to get a machine that would give you a specific type of output based on what you initially put into it.
But to answer your initial question: The presence of an electrical current was a 1 and the absence of a current was a 0, and this 1 or 0 would cause the logic gate that received it to act differently.
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