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>> I BELIEVE that the Romans calculated with the abacus Makes sense because it's quite impossible to use those numerals directly. Fibonacci and the modern deci
by MichaelRo 3y ago
>> I BELIEVE that the Romans calculated with the abacus
Makes sense because it's quite impossible to use those numerals directly. Fibonacci and the modern decimal numeral system came much, much later.
The emphasis is on "I believe". I would expect some documents which attest that but maybe no such luck. Like "posca", maybe it was considered too common sense to be worth written down.
On the other hand what amazes me is the thought that the entire WW2 was fought flying planes that were designed and built without the slightest trace of electronic calculator coming in aid. There's integrals and derivatives and transcendental functions, how the heck did they manage to do that with pen and paper?
I know they had tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions and some mechanical calculators but come on.
- dreamcompiler 3y agoThey had slide rules which can multiply, divide, and compute roots and trig functions very quickly, albeit only to about 3 digits of precision.
- 082349872349872 3y agoEE "Doc" Smith's SF can be amusing to read today, because they're zooming around the universe in FTL spaceships with coruscating destructive rays powered by bus bars the size of office buildings back on earth, and every time a rakish commander needs confirmation on a hunch, one of his engineers spends a few seconds with the "slip stick" (how did you think they navigated?) and reports back, yes, it checks out to 10 decimal places...
- QuesnayJr 3y agoIn Skylark of Valeron (1934), the hero finally invents a "mechanical brain", i.e. a computer.