3 ms·
No one ever claimed it was a general-purpose computer. Like all special-purpose computers, it performs a specific computation when used.
by db48x 8y ago
No one ever claimed it was a general-purpose computer. Like all special-purpose computers, it performs a specific computation when used.
- qubex 8y agoThat’s actually a fascinating point because I both in one sense am not denying the device’s generality whilst in another sense indeed defending it’s generality: it might be said that I’m actually saying it’s general because you can run those grids upon virtually any engraved backplane while at the same time since reading off the backplane is all the device does I’d be arguing it isn’t general at all. This is the mechanical analogue computer equivalent of a digital discrete computer’s bi-dimensional lookup table.