4 ms·

The original meaning of the word computer was a person who calculates. Looks perfectly clear to me.

• anal_reactor 2y ago
  I have a very funny example of how using outdated words might lead to miscommunication, but unfortunately that particular one could get me banned, so let's just say that I'm a huge fan of picking a version of langauge from one specific time period and sticking to it, instead of having the reader do all the guesswork.
  • rustcleaner 2y ago
    Nothing feels quite like running gay and free with creative language! :^)
• yallpendantools 2y ago
  > The original meaning of the word computer was a person who calculates. Was that ever so? According to Google Ngrams, "computer" was not really a term until, predictably, around 1950, even though the verb "compute" has been in use throughout history (it comes from the Latin "computare", apparently). That tells me "computer" was never a person, always a machine. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=compute%2Ccomputer&year_start=1500&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=compute%2Ccomp...
  • frisia 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)?useskin=...
  • femto 2y ago
    Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) The first reference in the Wikipedia article is to the original definition in the Oxford English Dictionary. Dating from 1613, it refers to a person.
  • nkrisc 2y ago
    The first “computers” were people, who computed. And the term was used to mean as much until very recently. > From 1953 to 1958, Johnson worked as a computer,[23] analyzing topics such as gust alleviation for aircraft. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson