How We Taught Machines to Talk: Languages and Operating Systems | Inside the Machine, Ep 02

How did we teach a box of switches to understand words? Not in one step, but in a staircase of them: a wiring plan, a row of 0s and 1s, a tape with letters, Grace Hopper's compiler, FORTRAN, BASIC at four in the morning, UNIX rewritten in C, and finally one line a child can type. Inside the Machine is a six-part series on the complete story of computers, software, the internet and AI. Episode 2 follows the software: from Ada Lovelace's note and the ENIAC programmers to Python and Linux — and goes all the way down, once, from one line of code to the electricity in the processor. It ends with how people learned to code, in Cambridge, Purdue and India. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open: the same job, five ways 1:12 What is software? (1843 – 1958) 2:44 Talking in switches: ENIAC, machine code, assembly (1946 – 1949) 5:08 The first compiler: Grace Hopper, FORTRAN, COBOL (1947 – 1960) 9:04 A language for everyone: BASIC and time-sharing (1964 – 1975) 10:51 UNIX and C (1969 – 1978) 13:45 The family tree: C++, Python, Java, JavaScript (1979 – 1995) 16:17 How a language becomes 0s and 1s: lexer, parser, code generator, fetch–decode–execute 18:08 Operating systems: System/360, DOS, Mac, Windows, Linux (1956 – 2008) 20:16 The first applications: VisiCalc and the spreadsheet (1978 – 1990) 22:25 Learning to code: Cambridge, Purdue, IIT Kanpur, NIIT (1953 – today) 26:00 Ending PREVIOUS: Episode 1 — How Computers Began: From Counting to 0 and 1. NEXT: Episode 3 — Machines We Can Use (the keyboard, the mouse, the window, the file — and the phone). Narrated by Gopi (my own voice, recreated with AI). Scenes marked "Illustration" are AI-generated; the diagrams and animations were made for this film. The five recap shots at the start are marked "Last time". No company screens or logos are copied; the 1980s screens are drawn. Every fact, date and name in this episode was checked against sources; the full list is in the pinned comment. If you spot a mistake, tell me in the comments and I will fix it. MUSIC (Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com, licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Cipher2, Our Story Begins, Static Motion, Reaching Out, Blue Feather, Dream Culture, Mesmerize, Perspectives, Winter Reflections, Ever Mindful, Meditation Impromptu 02, Peace of Mind PICTURES: Wikimedia Commons (public domain, CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA works by AnonymousUnknown author, Antoine Claudet, Benoît Prieur, Beraldo Leal from Natal / RN, Brazil, Betsythedevine at English Wikipedia, Biswarup Ganguly, CODASYL, Christopher Adams, Clem Rutter, Rochester, Kent., Dartmouth College, Dartmouth College staff, Denise Panyik-Dale, Dennis Hamilton from Seattle, Washington, USA, Eric Peacock, FayFoto, Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D., Gylldorf, J.N., Huihermit, Ik T from Kanagawa, Japan, JL_pics Uploaded by Richardo42 at en.wikipedia, James S. Davis, Jason Scott, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Jonas Strandell from Västerås, Sweden, Kai Wegner from Berlin, Deutschland, Kozan, L'Astorina, Los Alamos Laboratory, Marcin Wichary, Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, Calif., Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, U.S.A., NASA, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Langley Research Center / NACA, Taub, National Museum of American History, Odacir Blanco, Pete Souza, Rlerdorf at English Wikipedia, Robert Garner, Saad Faruque from Bangalore, India, Sam Pullara from San Francisco, CA, USA, Tangopaso., U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, U.S. Army Photo, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Unidentified U.S. Army photographer, Unknown authorUnknown author, User:Gortu, Warren K. Leffler, Windell Oskay from Sunnyvale, CA, USA, Wolfgang Stief, edwardhblake, icpcnews icpcnews, null0 from Singapore, Singapore, original uploader was en:User:Muhandis, stiefkind), U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, NASA, Library of Congress, Computer History Museum, Smithsonian. Full list with links and licences: pinned comment. Pictures are cropped and shown with slow movement. Modern footage: Pexels (free licence) 854913, 1085656, 4499174, 5289120, 5892372, 5892377, 6186015, 6754830, 6979935, 8199366, 8888432, 8888818, 9198246, 9198272, 9373207, 9566431, 10409075, 11158789, 13456541, 14741621, 15406860, 15622411, 16629789, 20503026 — thank you to the creators. Map: Natural Earth (public domain). SOURCES: Wikipedia, the Computer History Museum, Britannica, the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Dartmouth College (BASIC at 50), Bell Labs / Dennis Ritchie's UNIX history pages, the IIT Kanpur computer centre history, NIIT and Aptech company histories, and Dan Bricklin's VisiCalc history pages; the full list is in the pinned comment. #ComputerHistory #Programming #Documentary #InsideTheMachine #GraceHopper #FORTRAN #UNIX #Python #Linux #HistoryOfTechnology