At my house we are currently in the middle of a move, so this means going through all the millions of boxes of your family’s stuff and deciding what stays and what goes. While rummaging through these boxes I came across my sisters old cell phone… a brick of a phone if I ever saw one and it made me think about how this thing come to be the slim things we have today. Thus we have Product Evolution, an assignment where you make a YouTube video showing the progression of technology through the ages.
There where already these types of videos out there, and plenty on computers and cell phones. So I had to think of something different, I’m a math major so a calculator is a daily companion to most everywhere I go so why not Calculators through history? Now I made a tutorial on how to make one such video already so this is mostly on inspiration and implementation. It’s hard to get much story out of this type of video but it was interesting enough to see how calculators started as these hulking devices and ended as something which can fit into your hand. My favorite was probably the Curta, 1948 as the size difference between the ones before it was so fast it was amazing to see this one pop up. Though I’m sure the picture I was able to find is not of one from 1948 they were able to fit into your palm like a manual counter.
I really liked how the transitions had this sense of fighting and tension between each picture, like the next one pushed the previous one out of the way so it could shine. The music was mostly chosen just cause of the math reverences but it was humorous that the line “we made our own computer” came up just as the “Comptometer” was shown. Happened completely by accident but I’ll take it.
