Posted on 01/22/2011 7:21:47 AM PST by Repulican Donkey
Charles Babbage would beg to differ. So would the creators of the Antikythera Mechanism.
Ok, show me the Babbage revolution.
The computer is so far beyond a computing machine it’s not even a fair comparison.
Babbage’s invention was very very clever, ingenious. Impractical until quantum mechanics and the transistor.
Would you admit the transistor is completely new?
But let’s for argument sake Babbage invented the computer.
Ok, so something completely new appeared on Earth in the Nineteenth century instead of the 1940s.
My point stands. The programmable computer is completely new.
A little off topic, there is a book that explored an alternative universe where Babbage’s difference engine HAD been developed and revolutionized society:
http://www.amazon.com/Difference-Engine-Spectra-special-editions/dp/055329461X
It was not a multipurpose programmable computer.
You could call a slide rule a computer too if you wanted.
Charles Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, said in 1899 “Everything that CAN be invented HAS been invented.”
yes
It’s a new development to replace the vaccuum tube.
Quantum traveling alien spork weasel.
Next...
The Vaccuum tube is another new thing. Inconceivable without the discoveries of turn of the 20th century physics.
We are really off on a tangent. The history of technology is the story of new things.
The Biblical writer was discussing spiritual matters, not material things. There really is nothing SPIRITUALLY new since Adam.
I recently saw this, from Herbert Stein:
If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.
But as regards the Antikythera mechanism, check it out...I think you'll agree that it is quite a fascinating find. It is like a slide rule in some ways, but it was an actual machine in that it had calibrated moving parts.
There’s a difference between idea concept and application. The computer I’m using now is a new application evolved to meet newly recognized needs, but it is still the child of Univac which is still the child of mechanical computation devices. The concept is the real idea. The navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship is far different from an Egyptian dhow, but they are both boats conceptually. The abacus did much the same as Babbage’s machine and it was around far earlier. Again, I do not mean to diminish or dismiss the genius of the innovator.
There’s one new thing that may be an exception but no rule is withoput exceptions. That is the steam engine. James Watt was a true genius. He changed human land transportation for the first time since the domestication of the horse.
I have followed the Antikythera mechanism with great interest. Completely redefines our ideas of what the ancients were capable of.
It is not a multipurpose programmable computer.
If hints in the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch are to be believed, what is new technology to humans was already possessed by fallen angels at the time of Adam.
Please see Encyclopedia Brittanica and Colliers. They were the “web” in their day.
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