5 ms·
It blows my mind to think that, with the invention of the relay in 1835[0] and the invention of boolean logic in 1847[1], a binary computer like this could have
by bashinator 12y ago
It blows my mind to think that, with the invention of the relay in 1835[0] and the invention of boolean logic in 1847[1], a binary computer like this could have been built almost a hundred years before it actually happened. There was just never the right person looking at both parts of the puzzle.
This is my go-to answer for the old "if you could go back in time, what present technology would you invent" dinner party question.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay#History
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole#Symbolic_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole#Symbolic_logic
- pavel_lishin 12y agoI wonder what it would and could have been used for. Seems like it would have been too large and expensive to be cost effective for most things, wouldn't it?
- bashinator 12y agoWell, the earliest IBM systems were used for processing census results, so that's one possibility. Ballistic trajectories for artillery were first done with analog computers, so probably not a good match. If you look up the historical usage of log table books, there should be some very good possibilities.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]