Is an early 20th century mechanical desk calculator a computer? There is no cons... | Hacker News

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		retrac on Dec 16, 2024 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: What did Ada Lovelace's program actually do? (2018... Is an early 20th century mechanical desk calculator a computer? There is no consensus on definition but for me, a computer follows a program. Maybe even only one fixed program. But a program. If there is no stepping through a program it is not a computer. Does the iterative method used by the difference engine constitute a program?

lazide on Dec 17, 2024 [–]

The term ‘computer’ originates from humans trained (and paid!) to explicitly do lots of math, so it seems to be.

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