> Because you'd conquer many industries with it simultaneously. Instant path to richness. I just mean to say, from my limited knowledge, the available applicat

> Because you'd conquer many industries with it simultaneously. Instant path to richness. I just mean to say, from my limited knowledge, the available applications were all (mostly?) bespoke anyways, so the inputs and outputs probably needed to be also. So perhaps a modular mechanical general purpose computer may have helped. > It's a different thing. Yes, you've made a good point, I agree. Perhaps, then, if you were to build a general purpose mechanical computer ~180 years ago you might use it for whatever application is required, observe it's most commonly used computational paths, then swap it out for an application specific computer. of (possibly?) reduced complexity. You can then take your whizz-bang-high-tech-expensive computer to the next client, rinse and repeat. Maybe.