I am coming to you today, and every day for that matter, via the amazing, magical, time saving world of electronics.  Let’s face it – no, you have to turn this way – it’s utterly fascinating what we can do thanks to something which, 50 years ago, was totally unheard of.  No, I don’t mean electronics itself.  Electronics, as the science of the movement and subsequent use of electricity, was initiated by Thomas Edison, who used it to power light bulbs or Benjamin Franklin, who used it to curl hair or God Himself, who used it to strike people down as early as the Old Testament.

Anyway, what I’m talking about is the level of technology we have today in the field of electronics.  Fifty years ago an electronic calculator was a nearly mystical piece of equipment about 1/2 the size of a typewriter and drawing enough current through a wall socket to operate 2 or 3 modern major kitchen appliances.  The machine could add, subtract, multiply and divide and print the answer on a little stone tablet (HA!  Just kidding.  Actually, it printed on a parchment scroll) – all for about 80 bucks.  Today a calculator, if you prefer not to use the one that’s part of your cell phone operating system, will fit in your wallet and operate on the excess light you’re not using at the time, running on less current than it takes to operate the average brain cell.  It will add, subtract, multiply, divide, figure square roots and further perform all sorts of numbery things you don’t even have a clue as to the purpose of – all for about $4.99.  Or, as a free gift with the purchase of a large soft drink.

The difference in cost stems mostly from the variation between the words “electric” and “electronic”.  “HA,” you say to yourself, because you are, after all, sitting by yourself or you wouldn’t be reduced to reading this article.  “How can a simple adjustment in spelling change the price of an item?”  Well, from THAT point of view, would you rather write a check to your IRA or one to the IRS, huh?  Big change, right?  But that’s not the point.  As an actual example I could, fifty years ago, have written this on an IBM Selectric typewriter, at the time a newfangled modern office implement, at a cost in inflation adjusted dollars, about what a BMW 3-series would cost you today.  This unit was electric by the fact that it had an electric servo-motor which lent power assistance to all the moving parts:  the keys, the hammers, the carriage, the paper, the ink, etc.  This relieved stress on the fingers, wrists and forearms after a long day spent typing and it also increased the speed at which a person could type.  In addition, it would correc… no, it would check the sp… well, typing is pretty much all it would do, basically.

Today we use computers for these functions – or word processors, which are small computers built for one function:  to generate documents.  As you may have suspected, the government has roughly 92.37% of all word processors in existence today, as evidenced by the number of “official” documents generated daily.  Actually, the newest wing of the capitol building houses no offices at all, but is a huge word processor spewing out documents for the legislative branch as fast as the paper can be loaded.  The military has their own word processors, which occupy the first and second sub-levels of the Chrysler building, er, Pentagon.  These documents are destroyed as soon as they’re printed, for purposes of secrecy.

Now, my computer is old.  As a matter of fact, by industry standards, my computer is archaic.  I believe it was manufactured by the Mesopotamian Electronics and Pyramid Co., LLC and required a specialized operating system to utilize English instead of hieroglyphics.  Still, it is electronic in nature, sending, at the touch of a key, an electronic signal from the keyboard into a little electronic file cabinet in the computer.  When you recall this information, the electronic signals run from the little file out to the printer which places that information on paper with very few moving parts – kinda’ like a state highway crew.

“Of course,” you say, “but just how do you adjust dollars for fifty years of inflation?”

Well, the easiest way to do this is to have a “program” for such calculations loaded in your computer.  This program is simply a list of instructions, electronic of course, which tell the machine what steps to take to figure out the answer to a specific problem, such as “which came first, the bacon or the egg?”  Are these instructions in there, stored in some electronic language written in electrons?  Yes, sort of.  This operating memory is stored on “microchips” in tiny, bitty switches.  The language of the computer is binary, which basically means the alphabet of the computer consists of zeros (0) and ones (1).  If you were to open your computer and use a really, really, really, REALLY big microscope, you would see the memory right there on the chip in 1’s and 0’s:

“_{10101000000011111101010001001111111010100000111110100100101010100100111010000001111110100100011101011101010110001110101011101000000001111110101010101101001001001111111010010010010100001000100100010001000100101000100010010100010010100000000111111111110100100101000010001000000000000111101001000100010010100010100000000111111010010011111101010100011111111100101000101000100100001001001000100101000010010010010100100100100001001111010101000100100010001001001001001001000100100010000010111111101010001001000100100010010101000101010010101001″}

which, as everyone knows, is the typing exercise “the quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.”  Actually, that’s not true.  If you were to open your computer, like most of the rest of us who are, largely, mechanical morons, you would probably just drop your screwdriver into the main processor, arcing to the primary power supply and fry the whole unit.  I would suggest you take my word for it.

Naturally, each word in a two letter alphabet is quite long and requires a great deal of memory.  However, since the computer “thinks” at the speed of electricity flow it can zip through these long statements faster than the human mind can decide between regular and decaffeinated.  Also, because the computer is not distracted by outside noise, kids, hunger, drowsiness, stress, cute guys or large breasted brunettes it doesn’t have to go back to read that last paragraph over again and again.

And it can go through long strings of comparisons with an efficiency about 18 gazillion times greater than humans.

Obviously this is an over-simplification, but it gives you an idea of how the computerization and miniaturization of electronics operates.  It is based on the near-light-speed flow of electrons, the conductivity of silicon chips and the ability of manufacturing to reproduce these fascinating items quickly and inexpensively…  Essentially, it has something to do with magic.

From this point in the technology we can see it was only a short step to apply these principles to other, more advanced applications.  Today we have computer systems in automobiles constantly monitoring and adjusting key systems.  Televisions have small processors to check and maintain the picture quality on your screen.  Even exercise equipment is computerized so you can tell how many more hours you have to spend putting your knees behind your ears before you lose those extra pounds and look like the actor hired to portray the real person who lost 87 pounds in 7 weeks and won some handsome person contest and married another rich handsome person and made the person on whom they had a crush, but who ignored them for years, live to regret their mistake (satisfaction guaranteed provided you exercise with the device regularly and follow the enclosed diet plan, these results not typical).

Even the cell phone you carry every day is a technological electronic marvel which makes phone calls, sends texts, updates social media, holds your calendar, notes, music, videos and still has more processing power left than my old computer ALL in a small, hand-held package which would actually be useful except the typing keys are too small to actually use.