At 05:26 PM 6/17/98 GMT, you wrote:
but I don't think either was a computer. The
Jacquard loom doesn't run
a program - it transfers data from cards to fabric. Full stop.
It reads a set of instructions off the punch card, the gears or what have
you interprets the pattern, and finally displays the output on the fabric.
Sounds like a computer, in the broadest sense. The purists would say that
it's not a computer unless it computes. I'm sure you could do math on it
with a few simple modifications though.
I'd give the honours of 1st computer to the Zuse Z1
- a relay machine
between the Wars, I think. But some mechanical calculators at that date
were quite sophisticated. Comments, anyone??
Didn't that have something to do with RADAR? Or was it cryptography?
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