The History of the Computer: How Curiosity Learned to Compute

This history of computers documentary follows the breakthroughs that shaped computer science: algorithms, logic, transistors, microprocessors, the personal computer, and the World Wide Web. Watch to the end to see how computing became personal—and why quantum computing is the newest edge of the same old curiosity.

The history of the computer isn’t a list of gadgets—it’s the story of curiosity becoming mechanized. Long before electricity, humans learned to store methods, repeat procedures, and trust results that didn’t depend on memory or mood. Then we learned to build that reliability into matter: gears, cards, tubes, transistors, silicon—and now quantum experiments at the edge of what “computing” can mean.

We’ll follow the true turning points: algorithms before code, logic before hardware, the stored-program leap, the transistor’s shrink-ray effect, networking’s quiet rewiring of distance, and the moment computing became personal. By the end, the hook resolves in a simple realization: the machine never became human—our questions simply gained a body that could endure.

0:00 - The Question
1:07 - Counting Becomes a Tool
2:19 - Gears, Levers, and the First Calculators
3:17 - The Unbuilt Computer That Changed Everything
5:11 - Data Learns to March in Lines
6:12 - When Math Learns to Speak “Logic”
7:48 - Electricity Enters the Story
8:55 - The Stored-Program Revolution
10:56 - The Transistor Shrinks the World
11:56 - The Microprocessor and the Personal Computer
12:51 - The Web, the World, and the Pocket
14:02 - Resolution

If this one stayed with you, the next story is waiting:    • The History of the Internet: The Connectio...  

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