How many of you like HP41C calculators?

From: Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com>
Date: Fri Nov 21 14:15:39 2003

Of course a lot of the problems with the word 'computer' are historic.

When all this electronic/symbolic crap started (even radar fits in
there), 'computer' meant one who computes; then wiseguys started making
'electronic computers', and 'automatic computers', and 'automatic,
electronic computers', and 'analog computers', and my favorite
penultimate, 'automatic, electronic, digital computers', which appeared
in the title of many books pre-1960.

Analog computers, even assuming the simpler
operational-amplifiers-and-multipliers kind of closed-loop jobs,
'compute' in an entirely different way, for in 1952, solving a
three-term equation on real time was pretty amazing, and the
mechanized-thuoght, computational world was open and infinite.

Clearly a bunch of opamps today don't make a computer by *most* people's
standards today.

I'm perfectly amused with these semantic games, but then I'm nuts, I
hope it doesn't go to far in here :-)


I'm not sure where that HP-41 went...
Received on Fri Nov 21 2003 - 14:15:39 GMT