Original subtitles

Computer, with your help, we'll be able to stop all wars, end world hunger,

create more leisure time.

Finally, the results I've been waiting for.

Wait a minute. This can't be right.

It's Bill Nye the Science Guy. Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Science rules.

Bill Nye the Science Guy. Inertia is a property of matter. Bill, Bill, Bill,

Bill. Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. T minus 7 seconds.

Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. Bill Nye the Science Guy.

This is a switch.

It has two positions.

Off or on. Black or red. It's like a door.

It's either closed or open.

Doors are like that, and so are switches.

Now, here are four switches.

To get this door to open, they have to be in the right position.

You can think of the position of the switches like being information.

Information you need to get the door to open.

Now, here are eight switches.

That would be a lot of information, but I know the combo.

Now, see, even though it's a lot of information, Each switch is still either

black or red, either off or on. And this is how computers work.

See, humans invented computers to move and store information with switches.

Take a look at this. It's our computer simulation switchboard of science.

It has a whole bunch of switches. Uh-huh.

And each switch controls one of these lights.

Now, switches can carry information like...

One if by land, two if by sea, or this means nobody's coming.

Anyway, the more switches we have, the more information we can move around.

Like this would be the letter A. A, A,

see? Now the information got sent from these switches over to these lights.

Computers not only move information around,

They can store it.

If I throw this switch, the A is gone.

But the information is still there in the switches.

Now, the computers that you and I use every day have billions of switches. How

many? Billions of switches. How many? Billions of switches. Okay. And they're

too small to see with just your eye. They're electronic.

But they work something like this. They use switches to store information and

move it.

Not bad, eh? A. A.

I mean, not bad.

This switch.

Here they are plugging cables and setting switches according to written

instructions. This switch.

Several people are doing both numerical setup and control programming on the

computing unit.

The program one plugged in cables and set switches.

This is an abacus, an early computing machine.

You hold it like this. Now humans have ten fingers, five on each hand.

And an abacus has beads, five on each stick.

You count like this.

One, two, three, four, five.

That's one hand. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. That's two hands.

Now, to get to a number bigger than ten, you need a third hand. You have to add

another stick.

Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and so on. Now, there's nothing

in a computer that can count to ten the way you can with your hands.

Computers have switches, and each switch can only count to one.

Each switch is either 0 or 1. 0 or 1.

Then to count to a number bigger than 1, we have to go to another stick. This one

is 0 or 2.

Then to count, we go 2 plus 1 is 3.

0 or 4.

4 plus 1 is 5.

6, 7, then 8.

With enough switches...

Billions of switches.

Billions of switches.

Billions of switches.

You can count into the billions.

Billions. See, it's just another way of counting. It's called binary.

Binary means two, like a bicycle has two wheels.

Now each piece of information that's either zero or one is called a bit. Bit.

So computers count with binary bits. Each switch is either one or zero. Zero

or one.

On or off.

Oh.

You know, I think I hurt my arm.

Johnny wanted to hook up to the most powerful computer in the world.

Unfortunately, his modem dialed the wrong number.

Who could tell me what the capital of Ohio is? And that's why he became...

Johnny? Johnny Moronic. Six-pack of cola, $1.99. Five cans of corn niblets,

$0.99.

Gum. 75 cents, cotton balls, $1.99.

Hi,

Mr. Vice President. What are you working on? Hi, Bill.

Actually, I'm watching a lightning storm on Jupiter.

Wow, there's no telescope or anything. You're just sitting in your office.

Right. I'm using the power of the Internet to access the World Wide Web on

my laptop computer.

where I can see the luminous electric discharge in Jupiter's atmosphere that

produces lightning.

God, there's so much here. It's so fast.

It is, but as you know, the speed of any electrical signal is limited by the

capacitance of its substrates.

Yeah, you're right. Speed is always a constraint. But man, it just looks like

you could do everything.

Not quite everything.

I am vice president.

This computer is a form of hardware.

It's a very powerful tool, but without software, it wouldn't be worth anything

at all. See, software is a list of instructions that tells the computer how

to run its millions of switches, like how to turn on and how to turn off.

This videotape is another form of software. Without it, your VCR isn't

worth anything.

You need hardware, the VCR, and software, the tape, to make it work.

What's on this film is software, too. The projector is the hardware.

You would see a blank screen if you ran the projector without the software.

Lights, action.

Not bad, huh?

It's a player piano.

It's a lot like a computer.

It has software.

It converts information from one form to another.

In this case, the holes in this paper roll get converted to musical notes.

See, as the holes go by, they tell the piano whether to play a note or not.

They're like switches in a computer.

It's also a lot like a compact disc.

A CD stores information, too. But instead of storing it on a paper tape

with holes, it stores it on a plastic disc with billions of pits.

You can't see them without an electron microscope.

And there's way more information here than what you need to control 88 keys

and a couple of pedals.

Now, a CD could control thousands of pianos at the same time. And it doesn't

have to be a piano. We can play anything we want.

Won't you come home, Bill Nye? Won't you come home?

It's time to watch your show.

It's time for lots of science.

This is the time to build our science guy.

Computers convert information from one form to another. Like these barcodes get

converted into names and prices. Each dark bar is like a switch.

The laser reads the bars.

It sends that pattern to the store's computer, which takes that message of

light and dark spaces and matches it to a product and a price. Then the store's

computer sends a new message to the cash register.

Then a computer in the cash register converts that information back into

names and prices.

Now, the information about the price and any special the store might be having is

stored in the computer.

Not on the package itself.

And store managers can use this information to make sure they keep the

right items in stock.

How we doing there?

One million dollars.

Computers store information.

Plenty of it. Please consider the following.

You might not have ever thought about it, but a library is a place where we

store information.

Letters and words on pages are a way, well, a great way to store information.

Now, we can put the information in books and put the books on shelves, or we can

take the books down, open them up, and find a recipe for a pizza.

In a library or at home, if you have a table big enough, you can have a lot of

books open at once.

You don't have to go back to the shelf to get a book to read it. And you can

scan from one book to another, just like that.

A lot of the computers that you and I use are set up like an open book.

They have a part of their memory called RAM. RAM stands for Random Access

Memory. We call it random because you can get to any part of the memory

without having to start at the same place each time.

RAM is like an open book on a table.

Now notice that in a library, it wouldn't be much use to have all the

books open at once. You couldn't find things or skip over things, and open

books take up a lot of room.

Most of the information in a library is on the shelves, and most of the

information in a computer is on the hard drive or compact disk.

You can't make use of this information until it's in RAM, the same way you

can't make use of the information in a book until you take it off the shelf and

open it.

Well, thank you for joining me on... It's amazing!

It's unbelievable!

It's the EDZAC computer!

No more need for tedious pencil and paper as computing power never before

seen in the history of man. Hundreds of calculations an hour on thousands of

switches.

Ever wonder how a computer sorts through huge amounts of information?

You can see how a computer works by making a model.

I've got some 3x5 cards like these and I cut a corner off at an angle. That way

I'll know if my cards are facing the same way or not.

Then I gave each color a tab in a different spot along the top.

Then punch a hole in the center of each tab.

Now mix up your cards.

These cards are like pages of information stored on your computer.

Now if I want to get all the green cards out, I don't need to look at every

single card and sort them out one by one.

I can just take a paper clip and hook the green ones all at once.

Pretty cool, huh?

That's how a computer sorts things too. It looks for a marker or a tab and only

pulls out the information.

This guy's funny.

B8. Ah, you sunk my aircraft carrier.

You beat me again.

Seven out of seven, not bad.

Computer screens have a grid like this game.

For a computer to make a picture, it needs a program to tell it how to light

up the points on the grid.

You want to play again?

One more.

It's like making a picture just using colored pegs.

Make sure by itself the grid doesn't really look like much, right?

If we add a program and you fill in the colored dots on the grid.

It's a flower.

It's like a computer screen.

Either the point is off or it's on.

Computers make pictures the same way, by turning colored dots off and on on a

grid. Off and on. Zero and one.

One computer can be a powerful thing, but a whole bunch of computers hooked

together can be even more useful and powerful.

We often hook them together in what's called a network.

A network is like a net, and the computers are like knots.

Now notice that there are many different paths you can take to get from one

computer, one not in the net, to another.

And they're all tied together at the same time.

See, that's the key to a computer network.

It's like being able to go from Atlanta to Los Angeles without always having to

go through St. Louis.

You can take a different route every time you made the trip. The freeway

exits would come up in a different order.

And they're all connected at once.

When you're using it, you're able to get over, under, around, through, and to

places without having to stop in between.

So you can link your one computer to the entire globe. You can hook up with some

guy's spinning head in Seattle, if that's what you were into. See, you're

driving on the electronic super high... Huh?

Networks are amazing!

I mean, the realism that we're able to achieve now with all the circuits.

It's like a virtual pie in the face.

PluggedIn is a community computer center, and basically it's here to help

the community learn how to use computers and help me use them as a tool.

Being able to work with the computers.

and have people that will teach you when you don't know what you're doing and

maybe take you through it. That's very cool because when you get out into the

job world, you'll have to know those type of skills.

Collecting Enterprises is a business run by teams. We build web pages for people

or businesses.

Web pages are from the World Wide Web and they're easy to access from any web

browser. We just make them look as nice as we can. We build them to their

specifications. We put in little codes and little tags into the computer to

make it look like this, to make an image show up, or to make words show up in a

certain place.

What is that, pi at plugin.org?

Yes, pi at plugin.org.

The internet is cool because it links everybody in through information, and

that's the only common thing that we all have is we all want information.

We all need information.

I believe everybody should get plugged in.

Now, open the pod bay doors.

I'm sorry, Bill.

I'm afraid I can't do that.

I confidently expect within 10 or 15 years we will find emerging from the

laboratory something not too far from a robot or science fiction thing.

Some scientists are trying to make computers that work something like the

brains of insects.

The robot.

Suppose we took a simple instruction.

A thinking machine.

If there's something in front of you, don't run into it.

See, for you and me, that would be easy. We'd just open our eyes and see an

object and not walk toward it.

But to get a robot to do the same thing is a pretty complicated task.

We must make the computer aware of the same rules.

It took scientists a long time to make this robot.

There's a computer in it that uses sound waves to sense what's in front of it and

trace its path.

Artificial intelligence.

Now the reason it's easy for us is that human brains are so much more complex

than even the fanciest computers and robots.

Artificial intelligence.

We had a lot of fun working on this program, but we're not just playing

games.

Computers!

These planes are unstable.

We couldn't fly them without computers.

Computers make them maneuverable, so we can keep control no matter what's going

on.

Humans have figured out how much the plane weighs, how fast it's going, how

low the angle of attack is, how fast it might be turning.

the density of the air, and everything to figure out how to maneuver the plane

with just a little bit of thinking by the pilot. It's all done with computers.

Hey,

not that bad.

Science!

Science! Science! Science!

Science! Science!

The first computer that could do math problems way faster than humans with big

numbers was huge.

It took up a whole room over 100 square meters, and it was called the ENIAC.

The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.

It could do math problems fast, but it was big, heavy, and hot.

In the mid-1960s, the computer in this spacecraft was the most powerful

computing machine possible for its size.

It weighed about a 10,000th as much as the ENIAC, and it used about a 10,000th

as much electricity.

We made all those changes in just 15 years.

This thing was about as powerful as a calculator is today.

Not that bad, not that bad, not that bad.

Right now in the lab, it's the mid-1990s.

And a computer like this one is about a billion, trillion, trillion times

quicker. Billion, trillion, trillion times quicker than the very first

electronic machines.

Now, in a sense, all of our computers are like that.

Computers like this one or this.

But in the future, computers will be smaller, cheaper, and faster.

In the 21st century, they'll be even more a part of our lives than they are

today. They'll be everywhere.

Just watch.

See that just... 1-0-0-0-1 1-0

-0-0-1 1-0-1-1 1-1-0-1-1 1-0

-1-1-0-1 No computers, no computers.

Computers are just tools that convert information You oughta know by now,

cause they're all across the nation Oughta know computers They're a

complicated set of on and off switches If one command is wrong, baby, they will

have some glitches Oughta know computers Oughta know computers Oughta know

computers 1-0-0-0-1

1-0-0-0-1 1-0-1-1 1-1-0-1-1

1-0-1-1-0-1

Oh, yeah, I want to know computers.

Well, that's our show. Thanks for dragging and dropping by. If you'll

excuse me, I've got some object-oriented search algorithms to debug.

See ya!

Produced in association with the National Science Foundation.

Won't you come home, Bill Nye? Won't you come home?

It's time to watch your show.

It's time for lots of science. This is the time for Bill Nye. The Science Guy!