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Seems to be dunking quite hard on Babbage for no reason. You can invent something and not be able to build it, and he clearly invented a computer in the quite r
by wzdd 3y ago
Seems to be dunking quite hard on Babbage for no reason. You can invent something and not be able to build it, and he clearly invented a computer in the quite reasonable modern sense of a device operating from an easily-changeable stored program, with an attached store, to perform arbitrary computations and output the results. The design is plausible and the limitations are mechanical, not fundamental. That doesn't make him the most important person in the history of computing, but the Analytical Engine quite clearly fits the modern definition of "computer".
- iwontberude 3y agoHumans were computers at one point, does that count?
- relaxing 3y agoIt really does! Which is why we typically specify electronic computers when we’re talking about the history of the blinky lights kind.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoHumans can also function as electrical computers… you probably mean digital computers?
- Gormo 3y ago> Seems to be dunking quite hard on Babbage for no reason. You can invent something and not be able to build it, and he clearly invented a computer in the quite reasonable modern sense of a device operating from an easily-changeable stored program, with an attached store, to perform arbitrary computations and output the results. I'm not sure this is consistent with the way most people understand the term 'invent' -- the person credited as the inventor of a given technology is usually the person who first demonstrated a viable working example of it, not the first person to propose it as an idea, however detailed the idea might be. It's not enough to have a design you can't implement -- you have to implement it and refine it against the constraints of the usage context. That's not to disparage Babbage in any way -- his work was extremely important and definitely contributed to the development of modern computers, but I don't know if it makes sense to say that he 'invented a computer' in the same way we say e.g. the Wright brothers invented their airplane.