Hardware is a song from the Schoolhouse Rock! segment Scooter Computer and Mr. Chips. It teaches us about computer hardware.
Computer Rock
This song teaches about your computer's hardware.
Lyrics
Scooter:
I beat you this time Mr. Chips. You're really good at these Aurora Designs, but I can beat you sometimes.
Mr. Chips:
Of course Scooter, because I'm no smarter than the person who programs me. After all, I'm only hardware, just like nuts and bolts.
Scooter:
Oh yeah, you're the smartest pack of nuts and bolts I've ever seen...
Mr. Chips:
Listen, Scooter, some people assume that simply because a computer can gobble up all kinds of numbers and facts and figures and whatever data you happen to feed it, some people assume because a computer knows how to remember instructions and data and whatever it's told, and deliver it back whenever you need it as quick as a wink, some people assume a computer can think.
Scooter:
You mean you're not really so smart, Mr. Chips?
Mr. Chips:
Right, Scooter. I'm not equipped to be smart. I'm not equipped to think. I'm equipped to use software and process information, not to understand it.
Scooter:
What's software?
Mr. Chips:
The instructions you decide to give me.
Scooter:
And how do you use software?
Mr. Chips:
I use software with my hardware. The terminal keyboard you touch when you want to say hi to me, that's hardware. My video screen when I want to reply to you, that's hardware too. And this complicated equipment crammed inside of me, too tiny for you to see, that's hardware too.
Nothing but diodes, capacitors, and resistors
Interconnections and transistors
Jammed together like canned sardines
Thousands of teeny tiny machines
Printed on microscopic bumble bees
Called... chimpanzees
Scooter
Chimpanzees! So that's why they call you...
Mr. Chips:
Precisely.
Scooter:
Gee, Mr. Chips, you have a great brain!
Mr. Chips:
Brain? No Scooter, I have no brain. Some people assume that simply because I can beat them at a moth, war games chess, checkers, invades and raiders, all in the same afternoon, some people assume because I can shoot off a rocket and chart it and clock it, control and command it and steer it and land it, precisely there on the angry cattle go MOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! - it's hard to explain, but some people assume I have a brain.
Scooter:
Ok, but if you don't have a brain, how can you do so many different things?]
Mr. Chips:
Because of the different kinds of software people can fart me, scientists and secretaries; astronauts and accountants; managers and musicians; as long as it's put in a language I can understand, I can store the directions in my chimpanzees.
I can assure you I have a brain and I have a heart
And my chips would feel no pain if you took me apart
And I'll never know good not bad, and black and white
And I'll never know happy not sad and to the right
I am nothing but diodes, capacitors, and resistors
Interconnections and transistors
Jammed together like canned sardines
Thousands of teeny, tiny machines
Printed on bumble bees called chimpanzees.
And it's all hardware just like monkeys
Scooter:
You're sure a smooth talker, Mr. Chimpanzee.
Mr. Chips:
Maybe so Scooter, but you're the brains of the operation.