WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL, I LEARNED TO PROGRAM IN FORTRAN AND COBOL ON AN ALREADY-ELDERLY UNIVAC 494 THAT WAS PROUDLY LABELED “SOLID STATE.” ITS INNARDS WERE A BIT LIKE THIS. The Megaprocessor Laughs at Your Puny Integrated Circuits: The wondrous insanity of a 42,300-transistor CPU the size of a room. The Univac had tape drives and magnetic-drum storage. But it was huge, and whirred loudly in its own special glassed-in room, and thus seemed very impressive.