Compare this to the technology of the 60s and 70s.

When I was at college, there was far less of the 'magic' and one was much closer to the actual hardware. The process for running a simple program was ridiculously long-winded...

1) Enter the program on a screen that would convert it to a paper tape version.

2) Take the paper tape to a device that would read it and convert it to a signal to be sent to a similar device at Maidstone.

3) Someone at Maidstone then had to feed the paper tape into the the mainframe ( way too expensive for the college itself to have one ), do it's thing, and then generate a printout.

4) The printout was then transmitted back to the college...though often the college printer wasn't working so it had to be posted !

5) If one was lucky....one might get the result of 2 + 2 the same day.

The teacher could often be heard exclaiming ' When are we going to advance to the telegraph system ! '