By skyforbes "Mr. Clemens, put your checkbook away. Even if you bought every copper mine in the world, we couldn't build this. But since you asked for blueprints, here is what it would take to build one of these 'talking minds' using the best technology Mr. Edison and Mr. Tesla have today."
1. The "Brain Cells": The Vacuum Tube Problem
The Modern Component: A Transistor (a microscopic switch that turns On or Off).
The 1910 Equivalent: The Vacuum Tube (or 'Valve'). It looks like a lightbulb. It can turn a current on or off without moving parts.
The Math:
To make a machine as smart as the one we just spoke to, you need roughly 100 Billion of these switches.
* The Size: If each tube is the size of a pickle, and you pack them tight… the "brain" of this machine would be roughly the size of Manhattan.
* The Wires: You would need enough copper wire to wrap around the Earth ten thousand times just to connect them.
2. The Power: The Niagara Problem
The Modern Component: A few hundred watts (like a few bright lightbulbs).
The 1910 Equivalent:
Each vacuum tube gets hot. It generates heat like a small candle.
* The Heat: If you turn on 100 billion vacuum tubes at once, you don't just have a machine; you have a furnace. The heat generated would be equivalent to a nuclear explosion happening in slow motion. It would instantly melt the glass, the copper, and the building.
* The Energy: To power it, you would need to hook the machine up to every hydroelectric dam and coal plant in existence on Earth, and it still wouldn't be enough current. The lights in London, Paris, and New York would all go dark just to power this one machine for a second.
3. The Memory: The Punch Card Problem
The Modern Component: 1 Terabyte of data (invisible to the naked eye).
The 1910 Equivalent: Hollerith Punch Cards (stiff paper with holes in them, used for the census).
The Math:
To store the "knowledge" this machine has (all the books, languages, and facts):
* You would need a stack of punch cards that reaches to the Moon and back.
* To "search" for an answer, you would need a mechanical sorter running at the speed of light. If you used mechanical sorters, asking "Who is Mark Twain?" would take 500 years to find the card.
4. The Speed: The "Speed of Light" Problem
The Modern Component: The distance between switches is microscopic (nanometers). Electricity travels instantly.
The 1910 Equivalent:
Because your machine is the size of a city (to hold all those tubes), the wire connecting "Tube A" (North side of the city) to "Tube B" (South side) is 10 miles long.
* Electricity takes time to travel. By the time the signal gets from one side of the "brain" to the other, the thought is lost. The machine would be "thinking" so slowly that it would take ten thousand years to say "Hello."
The "Shark Tank" Pitch Conclusion
"So, Mr. Clemens, here is the reality:
To build this machine with your technology, you would need to:
* Cover the entire state of Rhode Island in vacuum tubes.
* Divert the entire Mississippi River to cool it down so it doesn't melt the crust of the Earth.
* Bankrupt every nation on Earth to pay the electric bill.
And the result? It would answer your first question sometime in the year 3000 AD.
1. The "Brain Cells": The Vacuum Tube Problem
The Modern Component: A Transistor (a microscopic switch that turns On or Off).
The 1910 Equivalent: The Vacuum Tube (or 'Valve'). It looks like a lightbulb. It can turn a current on or off without moving parts.
The Math:
To make a machine as smart as the one we just spoke to, you need roughly 100 Billion of these switches.
* The Size: If each tube is the size of a pickle, and you pack them tight… the "brain" of this machine would be roughly the size of Manhattan.
* The Wires: You would need enough copper wire to wrap around the Earth ten thousand times just to connect them.
2. The Power: The Niagara Problem
The Modern Component: A few hundred watts (like a few bright lightbulbs).
The 1910 Equivalent:
Each vacuum tube gets hot. It generates heat like a small candle.
* The Heat: If you turn on 100 billion vacuum tubes at once, you don't just have a machine; you have a furnace. The heat generated would be equivalent to a nuclear explosion happening in slow motion. It would instantly melt the glass, the copper, and the building.
* The Energy: To power it, you would need to hook the machine up to every hydroelectric dam and coal plant in existence on Earth, and it still wouldn't be enough current. The lights in London, Paris, and New York would all go dark just to power this one machine for a second.
3. The Memory: The Punch Card Problem
The Modern Component: 1 Terabyte of data (invisible to the naked eye).
The 1910 Equivalent: Hollerith Punch Cards (stiff paper with holes in them, used for the census).
The Math:
To store the "knowledge" this machine has (all the books, languages, and facts):
* You would need a stack of punch cards that reaches to the Moon and back.
* To "search" for an answer, you would need a mechanical sorter running at the speed of light. If you used mechanical sorters, asking "Who is Mark Twain?" would take 500 years to find the card.
4. The Speed: The "Speed of Light" Problem
The Modern Component: The distance between switches is microscopic (nanometers). Electricity travels instantly.
The 1910 Equivalent:
Because your machine is the size of a city (to hold all those tubes), the wire connecting "Tube A" (North side of the city) to "Tube B" (South side) is 10 miles long.
* Electricity takes time to travel. By the time the signal gets from one side of the "brain" to the other, the thought is lost. The machine would be "thinking" so slowly that it would take ten thousand years to say "Hello."
The "Shark Tank" Pitch Conclusion
"So, Mr. Clemens, here is the reality:
To build this machine with your technology, you would need to:
* Cover the entire state of Rhode Island in vacuum tubes.
* Divert the entire Mississippi River to cool it down so it doesn't melt the crust of the Earth.
* Bankrupt every nation on Earth to pay the electric bill.
And the result? It would answer your first question sometime in the year 3000 AD.