My mom was also a programmer in the 1950s. She tells about one CPU where you could use patch cords to change the meaning of the opcodes. My mind boggles.
One of my tutors at uni would get us to do presentations on old papers. I remember one that described a novel very early GUI system. They built the hardware by basically wiring two machines together at the bus level (one was essentially the graphics card), and adding a bunch of additional instructupions using TTL logic chips, it was immensely impressive.
