What is the first computer?

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Thu Jun 18 11:45:36 1998

> Ooh! Not so fast! Is it straight, helical, worm or hypoid? Or an
> eliptical gear even? But yes, a gear is easy to rconstruct from its
> wreckage.

Well, obviously one replaces with the correct type of gear!

> Some cams and levers, though, have quite tight tolerance
> spikes and notches which it is quite difficult to get right from seeing
> the bent/broken ones.

Impossible, sometimes. What if a special "hump" on a cam is so worn down
that one cannot reconstruct its shape? Some of the correct "shape" could
exist as aluminum powder.

> Bearing in mind Tony's, Sam's and others' comments on intermittent
> faults and the like, yes, up to a point. Video is not the only
> exception, though - other things (e.g. disk drives) can suffer
> similarly.

No, not disk drives. Sure, some analog circuitry in a drive might go sour,
but those faults would result in bad data. With a working drive, you want
correct data, and if you do not get it, something is wrong. There is no
tolerance. With an analog system, you have to expect that the output data
will not be perfect. For example (also a magnetic recording medium),
playing back a signal will never be the same as what was recorded, due to
noise and distortion.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Thu Jun 18 1998 - 11:45:36 BST