1st computer discovered?

[antihippy]

Scientists probe 2,000-year-old Greek [possibly] computer (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/07/antikythera_mechanism/)

I thought this was an interesting discovery. As noted in the article it would be a very interesting find if it turns out to be true. It's already been noted that the ancient Greeks (iirc) had discovered, and then subsequently forgotten, a version of calculus as well.

Just goes to show that some ancient civlisations were pretty advanced for their time.

[Zep]

But did they have Dr Scholls sandals? Or Cheez-Wiz? No, they did not!

[SteveW]

This is extremely old news. Wasn't the mechanism investigated by Derek De Solla Price back in the early to late 70's?

[Segnosaur]

The important question is: Can you run Linux on it?

[Roadtoad]

Scientists probe 2,000-year-old Greek [possibly] computer (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/07/antikythera_mechanism/)

I thought this was an interesting discovery. As noted in the article it would be a very interesting find if it turns out to be true. It's already been noted that the ancient Greeks (iirc) had discovered, and then subsequently forgotten, a version of calculus as well.

Just goes to show that some ancient civlisations were pretty advanced for their time.

Not really. They didn't have McDonald's.

[Beanbag]

The Antikythera mechanism is one of those things that gets "discovered" every few years or so. The good news is that technology gets better with every discovery, and they manage to glean a little more information from the mechanism. This time, they seem to have found inscriptions, which is a good thing. At least they didn't find a "Made in India" sticker on the back.

Everyone appears so surprised when a mechanism like this is "found," like any ancient culture would be unable or unlikely to have produced it. Gearing has been around for a long time, and because it can do proportional ratios, lends itself for mathematical operations. And gears can be produced quite accurately with nothing more than hand tools, because it's the relationship between the number of teeth on each gear and pinion and not whether everything is truly round or perfect that make gears suited for analog computers.

I follow the progress of the Antikythera mechanism stuidies because one day I'd like to make a functional replica. It would go well with the mariner's astrolabe, quadrant, surveyor's astrolabe, and cross staff I've made just for fun.


Beanbag

[Roadtoad]

I follow the progress of the Antikythera mechanism stuidies because one day I'd like to make a functional replica. It would go well with the mariner's astrolabe, quadrant, surveyor's astrolabe, and cross staff I've made just for fun.


Beanbag

Photos, please. And are you selling copies?

[Zep]

The important question is: Can you run Linux on it?No, only DOS. Limited BIOS, you see...

[rjh01]

I am a computer expert. It runs on machine code. For Linux or DOS you either need a translator or interpreter. It has neither.

[Beanbag]

Photos, please. And are you selling copies?

Seven-inch mariner's astrolabe, .25" (6mm) thick brass. Eight-inch engineer's astrolabe, .125" (3mm) thick brass, in custom-fitted red oak case. (I know: both need a good polishing. I'm out of Brasso right now)

These were made as part of my personal research into medieval and Rennaisance scientific instruments. No plans to go into production, these were one-off, hand made pieces, made just like the originals. The engineer's astrolabe has a graphical dial calculator for determining solar declination on the back side, all hand-engraved. The mariner's astrolabe makes a good weapon when hung on a rope or chain.

Beanbag

[Meffy]

Worst-case scenario.

"We'll display the Antikythera device next to our Kythera dev-"
KABOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!

[Jonathan Hamilton]

"Advanced for their time" is a misleading thing to say. I don't mean to call you out on it, but you have the unfortunate pleasure of being used as an example. :)

There's a misperception that as mankind moves toward the future, we are necessarily improving in general, as if something in our nature guarantees progress. We consider ourselves more advanced than the generations that have come before us by virtue of having had more time to learn and grow.

The problem is that that assumption relies on the idea that we have always been constantly working towards the same goals and that those goals will result in our advancement, however you may define advancement.

Even if the assumption that our progress as a species is directly proportional and correlated to the time we have existed is correct (whew, pause for breath), we've still encountered serious setbacks on the road to that progress. Not to abuse already overworked historical tropes, but think of the European "Dark Ages" and the burning of the Library of Alexandria. We know that tremendous amounts of literature, scientific knowledge, and recorded history were forever lost in cataclysms of war, plague, and migration. Who can say for sure whether ancient peoples were more or less advanced than we consider ourselves? The Romans didn't even have a concept of zero or knowledge of calculus, and they considered the principles of the steam engine as good for toys and nothing else, yet they were the dominant force in engineering in the Western world and achieved feats of architecture that subsequent cultures weren't able to duplicate for centuries.

What I'm getting at is that to say a culture was "advanced for its time" betrays a mode of thought that assumes our current notion of advancement and our current priorities of knowledge and the application of knowledge are correct. That's a dangerous road to go down, because it can lead to an arrogance of perspective that limits our ability to appreciate the accomplishments of those who have come before us and to see the real value in the past.

[Earthborn]

"Advanced for their time" is a misleading thing to say.Wouldn't it be funny if this thing we are admiring as "advanced for its time" was actually considered on old clunker, carelessly thrown away because it wasn't Y0K compliant? :)

[RandFan]

Seven-inch mariner's astrolabe, .25" (6mm) thick brass. Eight-inch engineer's astrolabe, .125" (3mm) thick brass, in custom-fitted red oak case. (I know: both need a good polishing. I'm out of Brasso right now)

These were made as part of my personal research into medieval and Rennaisance scientific instruments. No plans to go into production, these were one-off, hand made pieces, made just like the originals. The engineer's astrolabe has a graphical dial calculator for determining solar declination on the back side, all hand-engraved. The mariner's astrolabe makes a good weapon when hung on a rope or chain.

BeanbagCool, I'm impressed. Did you see longitude (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192263/)? It is high up on my list of favorites.

[kittykatkarma]

Reminds me of the Curta Calculator.

As I am "New Blood" I cannot post a right and proper URL, but if you copy the following into a new browser window ~ and remove the spaces ~ you'll see what I'm getting at.
vcalc.net / images2 / Master21G-860x560.jpg
Perhaps The Antikythera mechanism is a component of something larger and more complex.

[Meffy]

The Curta is a marvel, wish I could afford one. (I collect old calculating gear.) Curt Herzstark invented it while a prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp. When WWII ended he had Contina AG of Luxembourg manufacture them, and they kept making them until 1970. I know of nothing else similar. Magnificent piece of design and engineering.

[gnome]

At what point does something stop being a fancy abacus and start being a computer?

[Beanbag]

Cool, I'm impressed. Did you see longitude (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192263/)? It is high up on my list of favorites.

The movie was OK. The book was better, and the "illustrated" version of the book was even better.

Harrison was a study in raw mechanical aptitude and understanding, innate ability, and a stubbornness and level of perfection that drove him to success. The interesting point is that with the exception of the remontoirre to even out the power delivered by the mainspring and bimetallic temperature compensation, none of Harrison's developments were adopted in the first truly practical marine chronometers. Harrison engineered his way around problems by adding complexity, whereas Earnshaw and Arnold perfected their chronometer designs by eliminating complexity. Harrison showed the concept of a marine chronometer would work, but his design was too complex and required individual hand-fitting of parts to ever be practical for mass production. He was the right man at the right time.

Beanbag

[rjh01]

It is amazing that the problem was not solved earlier. The problem with Longitude was costing many lives and ships and Islands. Instead of a lone genius put a well run group onto it. Give it the resources it needed. If it cost the price of 10 ships to find the solution 10 years ealier then it would have been worth it. And that would have been a lot of money.

[Meffy]

At what point does something stop being a fancy abacus and start being a computer?
I know of no hard and fast dividing line. My personal answer would be when you add more direct input and readout of numbers than counting beads. So to my way of thinking, a pascaline is a calculator (or low-power computer, if you like).

Dunno what to call Napier's bones. "Aid to calculation" might be a good designation.

[Zep]

The Curta is a marvel, wish I could afford one. (I collect old calculating gear.) Curt Herzstark invented it while a prisoner in Buchenwald concentration camp. When WWII ended he had Contina AG of Luxembourg manufacture them, and they kept making them until 1970. I know of nothing else similar. Magnificent piece of design and engineering.I SO want a Curta for my very own! What a delightful object...

We do have one in our computer museum collection, of which I'm (acting) president.

For those who don't know, a Curta looks like this:

http://www.vintagecalculators.com/assets/images/Curta_5.JPG


As to the calculator/computer divide, it would probably be reasonable to define the computer as a general-purpose calculator in which you could store and make it perform a program of steps, including control of the sequence of those steps, i.e. it performs an algorithm. Whereas, a calculator operates by means of an external action (you put stuff in by hand, and you manage the algorithm, not the calculator).

[Zep]

Dunno what to call Napier's bones. "Aid to calculation" might be a good designation.Being the basis of the design for slide-rules, they are actually a genuine calculator.

[Meffy]

That would be logarithmic scales, great things but different. Napier's bones were a clever way to multiply long numbers by a single-digit number by laying down selected strips of ivory or wood (the bones) to make the multiplicand, each of which represents one column from a multiplication table, taking the row corresponding to your multiplier, then reading across adding up the carries from adjacent bones to get the product.

[Zep]

Sorry, I was incorrect and you are right! I was thinking of another variant of scales from slide-rules. However I'd still call them "a calculator", as it produces a singular result in one "operation" given one set of input.

PS. I still want a Curta... It's a gorgeous thing... :)

[Meffy]

I don't really make a distinction between calculators and computers. The "stored program" touchstone is a good one, but since I consider calculating machine and operator to work as a team there can be gray areas even there. No matter, it's a designation of convenience merely.

[Zep]

True. Think of the Jacquard loom. It produced a result over and over mechanically, but could be "reprogrammed" to produce a different result. Stored program, algorithm, everything... ;)

[Roadtoad]

I'm checking Ebay. Now I want a Curta, too.

[Meffy]

True. Think of the Jacquard loom. It produced a result over and over mechanically, but could be "reprogrammed" to produce a different result. Stored program, algorithm, everything... ;)
I was thinking of the Jacquard in connection with this thread earlier today. Good example of a stored-program device that's not a computer. Hollerith knew a good thing when he saw it.

Jacques M. Lemieux was a character I used to play in the game "Furcadia," a fin-de-siecle Parisian anthro cat, fine artiste when he could afford supplies, baker and cook when money was needed more quickly to avoid having himself and his ornate steam-powered all-mechanical computer thrown out of the apartment. I worked out a good deal of said machine's layout -- assorted cabinetry in designs from French provincial to art nouveau, chauffe-eau et porte de chauffage (with ornamental isinglass window), le jacquard (yup, you guessed it), le moulin (the arithmetic and logic unit), le flic-flac (a crude display, which made a riffling shuffling noise, hence the name Lemieux gave to it), and so forth.

Wish I'd had the time and skill to make a 3-D rendering of that machine. =@.@=

[Mr. Scott]

I don't really make a distinction between calculators and computers. The "stored program" touchstone is a good one, but since I consider calculating machine and operator to work as a team there can be gray areas even there. No matter, it's a designation of convenience merely.

My understanding is that the hallmark of a true computer is the stored program with conditional branch. A real computer, while working on a problem, is able to do one calculating step if a certain condition is met or something else if it's not, as freely defined by the stored program, in such a way as to allow it to solve any problem the programmer knows how to completely define.

The ENIAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC), often cited as the first electronic computer, had to be reprogrammed by rewiring, so it was really a reconfigurable electronic calculator, not a true computer in the modern sense of the word. The British seem to deserve the prize for first true computer for their EDSAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDSAC).

That being said, the Antikythera mechanism was most likely a calculator (with a hardware-defined fixed task or limited set of tasks) rather than a computer (able to solve any definable problem).

[Meffy]

It certainly wasn't general purpose. :-) <-- the Antikythera device, that is

I think Konrad Zuse has a good claim for inventing the first electronic computer by the definition you're using. I'm awfully glad the German government and military all but ignored his work.