The Number Machine

A number machine is a machine that works with numbers very, very quickly. In the time you need to say one word, it can work with more numbers than all the people in a big country could, working for a year.

What is inside

Inside a number machine there are a thousand thousand thousand very small parts. Each part does only one very easy thing: it allows electricity to go through it, or it does not. That is all. But when very many of these parts are connected in the right groups, they can work with numbers — and numbers can mean all kinds of things: words, pictures, sounds, moving pictures.

The parts became smaller and smaller with the years. The first number machines were as big as rooms. Now, a thousand thousand thousand parts can sit on a piece of stone smaller than a child's hand.

It does what it is told

A number machine cannot think. People write very long groups of words that tell it what to do: do this first, then this, and if this happens, do that. The machine does each small thing one after another, very quickly, and it does not need food or sleep. When a number machine does a bad thing, it is not because it wanted to — a person told it to do that. Maybe not the thing the person wanted to say. But the thing the person did say.

Most number machines can say things to other number machines, through the strings that connect them.