How Did The Humans First Enter The Matrix?

Sorry, I understand everything but this. Was it at the begining of time?

OK, the Architect created the matrix and put all the humans in little tubes and made them believe the matrix was real. How does that all work?! They must have been free and then put into the tubes right?

Plus, a PROGRAM (architect) created another PROGRAM (the matrix) How does that work? Was the architect created for another purpose and then created the matrix?! Aren't programs designed for the matrix? So if the matrix didn't exist, why was the architect created? I just don't get it...

You need to watch the Animatrix...it is a better explaination than i could provide...if you go to the Matrix website, you can download the two parts of the Second Renaissance...but, basically, after the war, the humans were taken, alive, and manually plugged into the Matrix...as for the Architect, he wrote the programming for the Matrix, correct...he was created with the purpose of writing and maintaining the Matrix, that was, and still is, his purpose...he is the reason the Smith-virus exists...yes, neo killed him, which made him seek to destroy Neo, however, the actual programming, the "compell"[ing] of Smith was from the Architect...but i get ahead of myself...a program can write another program, the Architect did it, the Merv did it, Rama and Kamala did it...

Or maybe The Architect is the Matrix representation of one of the Machines in the real world (a machine like 01 perhaps)?

a machine like 01?... isn't that the machina city?

Maybe he is not understanding what was there for the first humans.... when plugged in manually one by one, what awaited them... there obviously weren't billions of people already in. Of course this isn't explained, but one could speculate. The first Matrix iteration was a perfect world, but a perfect world of what?

A perfect world. No pain, no worries, no sadness, etc.

The machines "experimented" with humans and used electrical signal appied to the brain tho cause reactors. After years, maybe, of experimenting, the machines hooked up the humans to the Matrix.

well, we are told that the machines had already studied the fragile protein-based bodies of their predecessors, so i took that to mean before the war...

What is this confusion about the Architect creating the Matrix? Just because all Machines have ourpose does not mean they can all only do one thing, that would be ridiculous- they are fully realised, self-aware, independant beings.

The Architect might be a netowrk design programme, a softweare engineer, or simply an organisational specialist. It doesn't matter, the important bit is that he is an important programme and he created thew Matrix. By your logic, Machins would never create anything, clearly not so.