The Transistor Gets All the Credit. But Modern Computing Was Born in a Glowing Glass Bottle.
The transistor didn’t invent digital logic — it just made it cheaper. In 1948, IBM’s 604 system was already running reliable binary computation inside fragile, glowing vacuum tubes, using modular, field-replaceable components that pioneered the architecture behind every modern computer. The real breakthrough wasn’t silicon. It was the idea that logic could be wrestled from chaos.