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by hacknat
2748 days ago
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By that definition the abacus is the first computer. I don’t disagree with you that Turing completeness isn’t a good definition of a computer (especially since the word itself is quite old and has been in use longer than even Babbage’s computer). |
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It isn't. The abacus does not compute anything at all unless used as a tool by a human that executes the algorithm. The Antikythera has its algorithm built in, it will compute the same numbers no matter who turns the crank. It's a stored program computer where the program is stored in the proportions of the gears in its gearbox.
Think of an abacus as an aid to manual computation, and a Antikythera as something that actually computes.