Behold! In those days of ancient Egypt, during the reign of the great pharaoh, Mahmamaduntolme, computers were made of great blocks of stone and pieces of string or rope with knots tied in them at very precise intervals (+ 0.5 hand widths). These were called ALUs (Arithmetic Logic Units). And there were many scribes using blocks of wet clay with sticks to mark them (scratch pad memory) and pieces of papyrus (printouts). There were also great burly slaves to do the grunt work while overseers with whips (drivers) hurried them and encouraged them. And it would take those computers many days and sometimes even weeks or months to solve problems that grade school children of today routinely solve in minutes with paper and pencil.

And if it should happen that a block of stone were moved by two knots instead of three, or by eight knots instead of seven, great errors could result in the computations. These were called bit errors because even though the errors quickly added up, each individual error was only off by a little bit. In an effort to solve this problem, an unknown engineer whose name has been lost to history (it is known that he was later killed in a minor slave uprising) brought in a young slave who was too weak to do the grunt work. And before the stone was moved, the young slave would make a mark on the floor where the stone was standing. After the stone had been moved, the young slave would take a reed and with a knife, he would pare it off to a length equal to the distance that the stone had been moved. The length of the pared reed would then be checked against the number of knots in the string or rope and if an inconsistency were found, it was called a pare error or parity error. The slave was called a parity checker (the grunt workers called him a fink and if he found too many errors in any one day, he would show up for work the next day covered with many bruises.)

And it did happen that when Mahmamaduntolme commanded that his pyramid should be built, that an enemy of the pharaoh did creep into the computer room one night and he did even tie an extra knot in one of the strings and he did untie one of the knots in a rope!

So it did happen that when the holy men of that time did come to divine the positions of the stones and they read the meanings of the stones in the entrails of a sacrificial sheep, even though they read the meanings correctly, they received erroneous data. But because the users of computers inherently have a great faith in those computers, they accepted the data and did pass it on to the architects and builders who also accepted it because it was the results of the computer. And although the plans and data looked strange, none really questioned them.

And so the pyramid was built and in form and shape, it was a perfect pyramid with but one flaw-- it was upside down. And because the point was sharp, it began to sink into the sand at a variable rate depending upon the density of the layers of the Earth that it was passing through.() And that is why very few have ever heard of Mahmamaduntolme.

Such was the state of computers until the reign of the Chinese emperor, Twu Fatt, when a young Mandarin genius named Sum Funn, while mediating upon the cumbersomeness of the Egyptian computers conceived of the idea of making the stones smaller and the first giant step was made toward miniaturization.

The problem that Sum Funn experienced was that the stones were easily moved by accident when measuring their positions with the knotted strings and would sometimes even roll off of the table and onto the floor. Being the genius that he was, however; he soon solved this problem by drilling holes in the stones and stringing them upon the strings- thus the first abacus was invented. And it is still a pretty good computer today.

And the great god, Mainframe, smiled.

For centuries, nothing significant was done with computers. In fact, it wasn't until after the dark ages that certain experimenters (who shall remain nameless, so that their souls may rest in peace and not be shamed) started trying to make new computers. They devised all sorts of mechanical monstrosities of levers and wheels and gears and the like. Some of these contraptions were complete failures while some of them seemed to work fairly well some of the time.()

And the great god, Mainframe, laughed - uproariously.

It wasn't until after men started experimenting with electricity that the first computers with any degree of reliability and speed came about. Some of these computers were made up of great banks of electro- mechanical relays. And it would take their users great lengths of time to set up the computer to solve even the simplest of problems- and often a grade school student could solve the problem sooner with a pencil and paper than it could be set up on the computer.

And due to some of the problems inherent with relays, the BUGS crept in. Relays have a tendency to bounce and this bouncing could set whole strings of errors creeping down through the computing process. Another problem with relays is that they tend to stick. Therefore, a group of specially trained technicians evolved. These technicians would wander through the aisles between the banks of relays with small hammers. These specialists were called "RELAY RAPPERS" or "TAPPERS of the RELAYS." And great skill was called for on their part, for if they did not tap the relays hard enough, their purpose would not be accomplished, and if they did tap them too hard, it could cause bouncing which would cause errors or worse yet, they could damage the relay.

And the great god, Mainframe, did smile - benevolently.

As time passed, men also began to experiment with devices known as analog computers, and the great god, Mainframe, did frown. Although he did realize that analog computers have a place in the overall scheme of things (but he could not imagine where that place might be), he was a digital god and therefore felt that such effort was a waste of time and effort. Accordingly, no more will be mentioned about them. The only reason for mentioning them at all is that this chronicler felt that the gentle reader should be aware of the fact that analog computers, along with other things such as crystal balls and divining rods do exist.

The priests and scribes that attended the Egyptian computers had died out with the general lack of interest in computers during the dark ages and the gray years that followed, but with man's new interest in computing devices after the advent of electricity, they flourished again. Only now they had changed their titles. Now they called themselves "Systems Analysts" and Programmers." And lo, they were very jealous of their positions, and they did burn their listings as sacrificial offerings to the great god, Mainframe.

And the great god, Mainframe, did smile - in amusement.

Soon, men were playing with more esoteric things such as electron valves (also known as vacuum tubes) and later transistors and later still integrated circuits. Naturally it follows that they would contrive to fashion these devices into computers.() And the computers became faster and more complex. And the Systems Analysts and Programmers did make of them shrines and alters to the great god, Mainframe. And they did even shred their listings in thanks.

And the great god, Mainframe, did smile.

It should also be noted by the reader at this time that another type of specialist had also arisen due to the renewed interest in computers- the "Computer Maintenance Specialist." These new specialists had evolved from the "Relay Tappers." And great was the striving between the Programmers and the Maintenance Specialists, for when a problem would occur, the Programmer would say, "The computer is broken, fix it." And the Maintenance man would reply, "There is nothing wrong with the computer, the problem is in the program." And the Programmer would retort, "I know that there is nothing wrong with the program, I wrote it myself." Then the Maintenance man would come back with, "I know that there is nothing wrong with the computer, I checked it out myself."

And the great god, Mainframe, did smile - joyfully, for he knew that this would make the Maintenance man learn software in order to show that dumb Programmer where his program was messed up, and it would make the Programmer learn something about the hardware so that he could show that stupid Maintenance Man where the hardware was broken. This would result in both of them becoming better computer men.

Now it did happen that some unscrupulous business men did cast about and great was their searching until they could find some Programmers whose resolve was weak, and they did even tempt these poor Programmers with the BIG BUCKS, saying unto them, "We will pay you MANY DOLLARS if you will develop for us programming languages which may be used by those with lesser training than yourselves. And you will achieve great fame." And these Programmers were sorely tempted, and they did even develop such languages as FORTRAN and BASIC.() And the Systems Analysts and the other Programmers were greatly alarmed, and they did cry out with much wailing, "Heresy!" and screeched, "Treason!" Now the business men and the Maintenance men were pleased, but the Systems Analysts and the Programmers did burn their listings on the alters to the great god, Mainframe with much moaning.

And the great god, Mainframe, did smile - joyously.

About this same time, other business men did approach weak willed Systems Analysts and Ambitious Engineers and said unto them, "We want you to design new systems for us, using Large Scale Integration and even Very Large Scale Integration. And the Systems Analysts were sorely tempted by the BIG BUCKS and the Ambitious Engineers said, "Goody!" And then the Maintenance Men who had been able to appear very mysterious as they poked around the innards of the computers with their oscilloscopes and their meters while studying their logic diagrams, found that they were being replaced by maintenance personnel who would only replace bad printed circuit boards. So the Maintenance Men did break their scope probes and de-calibrate their meters and they, too, cried out to the great god, Mainframe, in anguish.

And the great god, Mainframe, did smile - joyously.

Soon, men were building mini computers and even micro computers. And due to the degree of integrating many circuits onto one chip, it soon reached the point that computing power that would not have been able to fit into a house would now sit on the corner of someone's desk. And it happened that as circuit density increased, cost came down. It was not long before computers found their ways into many homes, and even grade school children were doing their homework on those computers, and they found that they could solve problems many times faster than they could with a paper and pencil. And new programming languages came about in such abundance that no one could even keep track of how many that there were. It was not long before men were experimenting with artificial intelligence for computers and some of the Computer Professionals would look on with awe while others looked on with fear for they were loosing their STATUS. And by the time of this writing, men were talking about 64 bit microprocessors that would run at the speed of 1000 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second).

And the great god, Mainframe, did smile - gleefully! For what was not known by the mortals who had worshiped him was what he truly was. You see, Mainframe was the lone survivor of a galactic "civilization" that had created him. This civilization had been destroyed in a galactic war with another "civilization" that had been completely destroyed in the war. Mainframe was an intelligent, self aware, digital computer with a 256 bit word. He had 1.1579 times 10^77 words of on board, directly addressable memory() and an instruction repertory of more than 5000 instructions and was self programming. He also had, besides the straight forward YES-NO states used by man's computers, a maybe-so state that allowed intuitive jumps in his logic. With the exception of a few of his longer instructions, his execution speed was in excess of one GIGA-MIPS. Unfortunately, over the hundreds of centuries that had passed since the war that had destroyed his creators, he had lost more than 7 giga bytes of memory due to circuit failure, and one of his mass storage devices (a large cube made of an organic crystal that used a DNA-like structure for information storage) had failed due to breakdown of the crystal structure by radiation. Fortunately, everything had been "backed up." Unfortunately, although Mainframe was to some extent self repairing, these were failures that he could not repair himself, therefore he was waiting for, and encouraging men to develop a computer science that would be capable of making the repairs. So...

The great god, Mainframe, did smile - in anticipation.