Era Computers

* See also Bio-Electronics ( required to enable VVV ... )
* See also The_Thinker
* See also Rapture_Computers
* See also Era_Electronics
* See also Minervas_Den
* See also Historic_Tech_Timeline
Era Computers ( and what Rapture might mutate them into )
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This looks like an BINARY ADDER circuit for a single bit. You'd have a row of them to make up however large the arithmetic 'word' of your computer was ( 32 bits gets you to about 9 digit long integers ). The 'carries' would ripple down the row of these making the ADD instruction take longer the longer/larger the numbers the computer handled.
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Limitation - Program Memory :
One of the limitations of the (real) early computers ( and we are basically only in the First and Second Generation Computer Periods for BioShock's time ) was the amount of memory -- Going from electron tubes Advanced (REAL) attempt : https://rapturerebornmmorpg.fandom.com/wiki/File:Selectron256.jpg and ttps://rapturerebornmmorpg.fandom.com/wiki/File:Selectron4096.jpg for just the CPU Data Registers on machines with tedious plug/switch controlled programming ( and then a few technical innovations like CRT and Delay Line Memory ), then advancing to magnetic core memory ( with, WOW, whole kilo-bytes of program/data memory ), when most data storage still came thru as Punch Cards or on Magnetic Tape. 
Most programming continued to be tedious, and it took great skill to make programs and data fit within the limited memory. Computer languages were just getting started in the year when Rapture's 'civil war'/Terrorist Chaos began. 
Reflecting such limitations, still would be largely present even on The Thinker. I won't make believe that Rapture's geniuses, somehow with a Fantasy Wave of the Hand, ... THAT fiction writing crutch it is so easy to become lazy with. ) just happened to have invented the Integrated Circuits (ICs) CPUs and memory SIMMs and USB sticks, and the many other advances we take for granted now (60+ years later). 
Those REAL things all took MASSIVE collaboration and Decades of ideas/design/work by tens of thousand of experts/technologists and invention of wholly new technologies to finally make them possible --- BY NOW - TODAY. 
The game shown computer technology is "Quaint", as Star Trek's Scotty would say -- The essence of the games 'Retro' theme. So be ready for a Spoiler : The Thinker was NOT quite as 'intelligent' as the advertising said it was.
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Real Computer Technology from the late 1940s and 1950s :
Tubesbehind.jpg
Diskdrivebigg.jpg
Memorytubemodule.jpg
One-bit.jpg
Flipflopcircuit.jpg
Wirewrap.jpg
DrumMemory1951.jpg
Tubies.jpg
Lotsatubes.jpg
RAMDAC.jpg|Early Harddisk data storage
Plugboardprogramming.jpg|Plugboard programming
Plugboard.jpg
AutomaticCalculatorCirca1953.jpg
Computer_module.jpg
Drumdrive.jpg
Nikemissile.jpg|Tube modules
5MB_Harddrive1956.jpg|Yes, this is a 5 MegaByte magnetic disk 'hard drive'
EarlySiliconTransistor.jpg
Teletype2.jpg
Teletype3.jpg
NOTETHEOSCILISCOPE.jpg
AnalogComputer.jpg
Punchcard22.jpg
Miniaturevacuumtube.jpg
Wirewrap.jpg|Individual wires connecting circuits
Vputer.jpg|Tubes ... but look at all the other components required and all the wire connections - for just a few 'simple' circuits ( as compared to an entire computer )
PuchcardData.jpg
LotsaGutsInside.jpg|Alot more than just 'Tubes'
Complightsy.gif|These Lights indicate state of data and 'address' in the Computers Operation (very useful for debugging problems)
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Computers for Rapture :
Rapture's Computers being 'pushed forward' more than a bit technologically - Particularly through the potential of a Bio-Electronics base tech boost ( which I have interpolated to enable the game's DLC existence of even just a more realistic The Thinker type Supercomputer ).
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add pix from Minerva's Den here
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Revolutionized accounting in its time ... ( DEFINITELY Still in use in Rapture )
Not 'Made In Rapture' but Repaired in Rapture ...
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Wall of Tubes Computer - Eniac 1946 ( It's Look Was Cloned for Minervas Den ) 
The computer technology developed/changed/advanced fast ( even upto 1952, though Ryan would allow access for important tech advancements after 'The Isolation' ). Earlier machines would (and did) become obsolete very quickly.
Later in Rapture, The Thinker would have to be something quite a bit more advanced ( and much of that was also in its programming )
Other smaller Rapture computers would be of those old types (tube monster style). It is unlikely that you'd have more than one (if any) of those big 'mainframe' computer because of its expense ( and is there really a need for it ? ) The Smaller ones would be used for accounting and scientific/engineering number processing.
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Tubes from Minervas_Den. Unfortunately Tube Technology computers aren't anywhere near as fast (or compact enough) to perform anything like the processing any kind of 'simple' AI requires. Even your discount Smartphone exceeds what the old massive Tube-base computers did by several magnitudes.
Early robots used various mechanical ( and later simple electric ) mechanisms to perform their function. Think of your thermostat as a simple robot - It has a 'feed back' mechanism which maintains a temperature between a proscribed adjustable (programmable) range. For more complex operations such mechanisms can get terribly complicated and have to grow faster in detail than the complexity they perform. Mechanical devices (largely analog) have to be manually tuned and adjusted and constantly maintained, which forces them eventually into being ineffective solutions.
Robots STILL require some mechanical devices, but having a digital computer, with its precision much more controllable, doing complex decisions and guiding operations sidesteps much inefficiency. More complex control decisions can be carried out without as steep an increase in required mechanism to implement that programmed 'intelligence'.
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An Analog (mechanical) gun Fire Control computer for a warship ( a contemporary within Rapture's era ). SO, were the early 'automatic' Bathyspheres supposed to have this inside them ??? Not likely possible, assuming in Rapture they are supposed to navigate in Real Time ( something hard even to do TODAY ).
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One of the big (real world) Mainframe Company's transistor circuitry. Replaceable modules many times smaller than the earlier 'tube' systems. There appears to be only 4 Transistors, but that's the equivalent of 4 typical Vacuum Tubes. Quite a bit less space and less power required.
These were the ones that were successfully produced and deployed on a few computers.
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 Office Computer
Computer not much more than an Adding Machine, except that it is Programmable, and able to handle Punchtape data input and has 2 Tape Drives. Main Memory was a solid magnetic disk ( equaling 4 KB of memory ). This Unit had only 300 tubes. THIS machine cost as much as a suburban house ~ $16000. It is possible to do Accounting and Billing on a system like this.
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Removable Plug Modules ( sometimes called 'fingers' ) with one or two tubes and a number of components plugged into the other side of this array of sockets. Then the next tier of wiring (seen here) interconnected those Modules.
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Circuit board still with a Miniature Vacuum Tube (semiconductor) being used (socket at top) on a military computer developed in the mid 50s.
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Much Older Stuff :
Analyticalenginebasic.jpg|Babbage's Analytic Engine (proposed)
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A Plugboard used to program some first generation computers. These Systems ( including Second Generation Computers about the size of a large desk ) usually processed Punchcards for simple office accounting operations. That whole Board is swapable (Note the handles) allowing changing of programs ( which is implemented via sequence/patterns of the data wires connecting the different functional sections of the processors ).
Data coming in from Punchcards/Papertape and Optical ( Ink marks data on mailed paper Bills ) "Readers" is routed via many manually movable signal wires around to different mathematical digital-electronic functional circuit blocks of the computer, to carry out simple numeric processing and transactions. The punch cards, representing simple transactions ( like Bills or Accounts ), are manually pre-processed with card sorters into different sets ( like Deposit transactions versus Withdrawals ). The data 'sets' would then be run through a particular program which does the required numeric operations ( tallyings, account adjustments, use rate/fee calculations ).
The "Patch Panels" (of pre-wired 'programs') are in a removable plug-frame assembly, so that more than one program process can be run by swapping the plug frame between a set of alternate panel inserts ( each 'program' with a different wired data flow pattern/functionality ). The simple Programmed Processing was static and thus the Plugboards would be used over and over. 
Some small companies maintained simple systems like this for their common accounting well into the PC age.
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1964 an Analog computer (versus Digital) - Used for certain types of data calculation and analysis. Each of those masses of plugs and wires is a different 'Program' which routes analog data between different multiple function units within the Computer.
Offhand I can't think why an expensive specialized programmable analog computer LIKE THIS would be needed in Rapture. Planning and modeling tools would often be built specifically for the Task ( Like simulating Rapture's Air Flow or Power or Heating use ).
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Small Computers (Historical) :
24-bit computers 6-bit-op 3-bit-addrmode 15-bit address or ? 12-addr for 4KW KW = Kilo Word for data that's longer than a 8-bit Byte, ( KB is Kilo Byte) banks, or 3 4-bit register 'indexes' ( There were lots of different/proprietary architectural options in those earlier days ).
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Actual Difficulty with Those Oldtime (REAL) Computers - Their Very Small Memory :
There was just not that much memory inside those old computers, and external access to data (like data tapes) was very slow. A small data memory means not just limited data, but the programs themselves were quite small, and extra expertise was required to make anything useful fit into the available memory, and it required complex tricks for anything larger. Esoteric (and expensive) mechanisms were used for the early memory, and later improvements using Magnetic Core Memory expanded capacities a magnitude and decreased cost, but the amount of memory was still a tiny fraction of what the smallest computers had even 20 years ago.
Similar problems would exist with Rapture's computers. I don't want to go to Fantasyland and push the general technology too far in advance of where most of it would naturally be in a 1950s era world. Brain Boost and exceptional talent still does not result in a decades-early broad multitude of previously non-existent technological advancements. So much of real world computer tech is dependent on numerous advancements in whole families of technologies - tools, materials, processes ( which Rapture couldn't yet produce or obtain ). The Thinker itself isn't a tablet computer, but a monstrous mainframe system. Any advances are still largely restricted, with the majority of Rapture's systems construction mostly still being tech equivalents from the 1950s or early 1960s.
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Foresight is Good :
Some Not Quite Visionary Computer Maker in Rapture declared that "The Most Memory Any Computer Would Ever Need would Be One Kilo-Word" - a rather short-sighted thing to say. ( Note -- Bill Gates once uttered something like this, showing he wasn't quite as much a "Visionary" as some claimed, paraphrased : "No PC will EVER need more than 640 KB of memory" ... Causing the retardation of his companies Operating System by several years ). McClendon was fundamental in greatly exceeding that memory size.
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Mechanical :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_calculator
Analog Computers :
http://www.analogmuseum.org/english/impressions/
They used these things to solve alot of research calculations, before our type of computers came into being.
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Some Pre-Thinker Rapture Computers used Mercury Delay Tube Memory ? ( Some of the Scrapped machinery seen in Minervas Den ?? ) :
Main Memory was a chokepoint for early computers before transistors and magnetic-core memory. The first mechanism was to use vacuum tubes to store the data bits. Even just for the CPU data registers ( the blinkey lights you most often see in the popular view of a 'computer' ) that was a substantial number of vacuum tubes ( a data 'word' big enough to handle 6 digit numbers is 24 bits at least 24 tubes ). Programs in those times were often manually set via many switches and wire plugs into plugboards to guide the logic operations and the data flowing thru the computers, and in and out as Punchcards/Punchtape. To have programs live in memory, there had to be enough memory to store the many (at least dozens/hundreds) 'words' of machine codes needed for an adequate processing functionality (program). So they tried to find ways without using vacuum tubes to store large counts of bits/words which could be accessed quickly enough to be the computers program.
An early computer memory mechanism was a set of mercury filled tubes with an acoustic transducer on one end and a vibration sensor at the other. A series of clicks representing bits was sonically broadcast into one end and electrically picked up on the other end to feed back around continuously, making a repeating delay loop ( the delay was via the speed of sound in the mercury - 1450 meters per second, traveling the length of a several foot long tube ). The bits could be modified ( or regenerated continuously ) as they came back around via the electronic components. 
In a 2 foot mercury tube, the signal (data) would go around 2356 times a second using vibrations at 'click' frequencies around 1.3 Mhz to store more than 512 bits per tube. Enough mercury tubes were used in parallel to equal the bits of the computer's memory word (usually 32). Because of the linear delay ( waiting for specific data to cycle around ), it operated as RAM only if the Computer's instruction speed matched the memory's cycling frequency. Many computers at the time did run near 2356 instructions per second ( still THAT is 3000 times faster than a Man with an Adding Machine ). 
Such memory mechanisms were cheaper than the equivalent using a number of discrete vacuum tubes ( back when the whole computer had around 1000 words of RAM memory - 4 KB ). A somewhat faster memory system used CRT (Cathode Ray Tubes) to store bits as points on a screen, which persisted long enough, and could be read and written. These were later superseded by faster/cheaper/denser/less finicky Magnetic Core Memory and later (1970) IC RAM chips. In the MMORPG's Rapture, ADAM based Bio-Electronic nerve cell based memory was developed in the mid 1950s.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=core%2bmemory
Some ICBM missile systems, which had to have miniaturized and VERY rugged 'memory', used very simple magnetic hard drives to contain a few thousand words of program and data.
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State of Programming :
Real World, the first stored program computers ( not using Plugboards or arrays of switches/dials ) did not happen until 1947, and programming languages not until around 1955. With some possible Rapture accelerated advancement, a limited/specialized 'Programming Language' may have been available earlier in Rapture ( Porter would need something like this for his AI, and it is something that could be produced by a single man ). The earliest computer 'languages' were really 'shorthands' and 'macros' where patterns which were used repeatedly could be written and then expanded by a program to produce the machine code that was fed into the computer.
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The Ordinary Punchcard ( Workhorse of the Early Commercial Computer Age ) :
A Standard Punchcard has spaced 80 columns by 12 rows = 960 individual single binary value factors ('bits' of data) to be set/not-set ( the punched/non-punched hole ). Consider a 'thought' as used by a thinking computer with 900+ ideas attached to it ( within some realm of knowledge, instead of using the same card to be just 80 chars of text ). This is only useful in the data of a specialized section of a 'thinking' process.
Of course you could also spell out the 'thought' using English (logic equations) but with 80 characters of text. But even with systematic abbreviations, you might need several cards to express the logic which is required. ( It is even worse than attempting to transmit coherent ideas of any subtlety in 140 'texting' alphanumeric characters as per the 'texting' of our time ).
We can still use Punchcards in Rapture for their conventional use - for accounting, data management and even industrial control (like inventory). Common was a mailed billing where the paper 'bills cards had punches' to eliminate much manual data entry. The earlier computers in Rapture would be used largely for this kind of purpose. Similar was early optical reading/scanning ( those funny shaped numbers you still see on checks ).
Another possible method employed before data tape drive technology became mature would be use of microfilm embedded in the Punchcards ( I've seen these used for blueprints - usually more as a way to sort out and find a particular blueprint in a company that has 10s or 100s of thousands of blueprints in storage ). Diagram data or Data Matrix-like dot pattern ( large matrix to contain many more times as much data as a Punchcard could ) might store useful data or programs in a permanent fashion ( the photo creation processing is slow with several added manual operations, so this would be reserved for permanent archiving uses ).
Machines like this were used in Billing systems ( Note - not a full keyboard ) to manually convert numbers on paper into cards with Account and Amount transactions for computer processing.
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Computer Tape Drives For The Thinker ?? :
Magnetic Disk's data capacity were small (and very new).
PunchCards are NOT a good media for storing large programs or masses of data.
Magnetic tapes - MANUALLY Fetched/Loaded/Returned (in the real world). 
Tapes are NOT Random Access Read and Write (and Search). They are usually accessed in a serial linear fashion. Searching is a tediously long process for large sets of data.
You usually ( on a large computer ) use Several Tape Drives - one for the initial database, one for transactions 'batch', one for the database Update image. You usually would apply modifications in one Pass, reading, modifying and writing 'records' of Data. 
There usually is a room full of racks of Tapes for all the processed data.
Eventually you would have disk drives ( capable of random access read and write ) to which a tape could be quickly written, allowing efficient searching and allowing all the updates to be applied on the Disk and then the data was written out ( The Tape being used to store, archive the Disk contained data ).
Usually there was a separate disk for the system/programs, and then one for the temporary data ( which the tapes would be loaded/unloaded to ). Disks would later be made 'removable', allowing relatively quick changes of large sets of data ( much faster than copying back and forth to tapes ). Still for a long time tapes were a far cheaper way to store masses of data.
Tape Drive (and Media) Usage like this continued well into the 1980s.
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Punch Tape:
A bit more limited use that the later teletype paper tapes ( which used 7 holes for ASCII encoding ), but something like this was used at earlier times. Note that 'shift' type codes were used to access the alternate characters. We saw all those weird tickertape type machines in Minervas Den, though as shown really didn't make a heck of a alot of sense. 
I've seen (long ago) programs stored on Punchtape ( on small computers with no tape or disk drives ). They can also be used to transmit/transport programs and data.
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