50 yrs. ago today

[Fred Cisin]

>> Maybe you've got a digit wrong?

On Tue, 29 Oct 2019, William Sudbrink via cctalk wrote:
> 500 years ago?  A pair of abaci (or abacuses?) linked with strings?

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