Computers today are sleek, lightning-fast, and so intuitive that even toddlers can swipe their way through apps. But rewind a few decades, and you’ll find that early computers were anything but user-friendly. In fact, some of their quirks were downright bizarre—even laughable by today’s standards.
From machines that weighed as much as a small car to programmers literally debugging their computers with fly swatters, the early days of computing were filled with oddities that seem almost unbelievable now. Here are five of the strangest facts about early computers that will make you chuckle—and maybe appreciate your smartphone a little more.
1. The First Computer Bug Was an Actual Bug
We’ve all heard the term “computer bug,” but did you know it originated from a literal insect? In 1947, engineers working on the Harvard Mark II computer found a moth stuck in one of the relays, causing a malfunction.
Grace Hopper, a pioneering computer scientist, taped the moth into the logbook with the note: “First actual case of bug being found.” While the term “bug” had been used before to describe technical glitches, this incident cemented it in tech history.
Fun fact: The moth is still preserved at the Smithsonian Museum!
2. Early Computers Were So Big They Needed Their Own Rooms
Today’s computers fit in our pockets, but early models were massive. The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), one of the first general-purpose computers, weighed 27 tons and occupied 1,800 square feet—about the size of a small house.
Even crazier? It had 17,468 vacuum tubes that constantly burned out, requiring teams of technicians to replace them daily. Imagine waiting for your laptop to boot up—only to realize you need to swap out a dozen tiny glass tubes first!
3. Programmers Had to “Manually Compile” Code Using Punch Cards
Before keyboards and monitors, programmers used punch cards—stiff paper cards with holes representing data. Writing code meant punching thousands of holes by hand, then feeding the stack into the computer.
One wrong hole? The whole program failed. Some programmers even wore white gloves to avoid smudging the delicate cards. And if you dropped your stack? Good luck sorting them back in order—some projects took weeks just to reassemble.
4. The First Hard Drive Had to Be Moved with a Forklift
In 1956, IBM released the RAMAC 305, the first computer with a hard drive. Sounds impressive, right? Well, this “hard drive” was the size of two refrigerators, weighed over a ton, and stored a whopping 5MB of data—barely enough for a single MP3 song today.
Transporting it required a forklift, and leasing one cost $3,200 per month (about $32,000 today). Imagine paying that much for less storage than a single photo on your phone!
5. Some Early Computers Ran on Water
Forget electricity—one of the earliest “computers” used water to solve equations. The Moniac (Monetary National Income Analogue Computer), built in 1949, was a hydraulic machine that modeled the UK economy.
It used water flowing through pipes and tanks to simulate financial systems. If the economy was doing well, water levels rose; if not, they dropped. While innovative, it was also hilariously impractical—leaks meant your economic forecast was suddenly underwater (literally).
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Were early computers really that slow? A: Painfully slow. The ENIAC could perform 5,000 additions per second, which was revolutionary at the time. Today, your phone does billions of calculations in the same time.
Q: Did people actually think punch cards were efficient? A: At the time, yes! They were a huge step up from manual calculations, but by today’s standards, they’d be a nightmare.
Q: How did programmers debug without screens? A: They used lights, switches, and printouts—imagine fixing an error by staring at a wall of blinking bulbs!
Final Thoughts
Looking back, early computers were clunky, bizarre, and sometimes downright ridiculous. But without these strange inventions, we wouldn’t have the pocket-sized supercomputers we rely on today.
So the next time your laptop freezes, just be glad you don’t have to fish a moth out of it or refill its water tank!