50 yrs. ago today

On Tue, 29 Oct 2019, William Sudbrink via cctalk wrote: It has been said that when more digits were needed, that two abaci were put together, . . . "a digit wrong" could also mean 60 or 70 instead of 50 There is nothing to indicate that the Antikythera had any communications capabilities. The first known documented use of "computer" in English is 400 years ago. In those days, it was somebody who computes. Now, it is something that computes. BUT, if we drop the English ethnocentricity, Pliny the elder said, "latitudo sane computetur", referring to computing the size of Asia. And from there, quite likely some unrecorded references to the "computers" doing the computing. Among people who compute[d], there was certainly communication. There must have been inter-computer communication, or where would little computers come from? The "first" commercial modem is stated as being 1962. But, there were plenty of computers directly connected to each other before that. None of the objections to "first inter computer communication" should diminish the importance of the "first packet of the internet". It was surely a moment of rejoicing when it finally worked. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com