[carapace]

What do you mean? IBM didn't sell computers until 1952:

> IBM built the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, an electromechanical computer, during World War II. It offered its first commercial stored-program computer, the vacuum tube based IBM 701, in 1952.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM#History

[marcosdumay]

Oh, I remembered one less decade, it was 5.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabulating_machine

Things didn't use to be name "computer" before Turing, for reasons that are a bit less obvious than they appear to be at first, but the idea is quite old.

[carapace]

edit: Have we had this argument before?

- - - -

> Oh, I remembered one less decade, it was 5.

Not to split hairs but IBM was founded in 1911.

> Things didn't use to be named "computer" before Turing, for reasons that are a bit less obvious than they appear to be at first, but the idea is quite old.

Babbage and Lovelace had the idea a couple of centuries ago, but tabulating machines and the business machines IBM sold aren't quite the same thing as what we think of as a "computer" today. Arguably the thing that most differentiates them- easy of re-programmability -is exactly what makes our modern machinery so untrustworthy.

Leaving aside the argument that accounting and tabulating are themselves tools of "the state" (e.g. the tabulating machine was "designed to assist in summarizing information ... for the 1890 U.S. Census.") can you deny that what might be called "computational supremacy" has been and continues to be a crucial aspect of international relations?