textbooks refer to babbage's differential machine, or even the eniac as the world's first computer. When I beg to differ, I cite the Antekythera (or however ya spell ti) mechanism. opens a few eyes as to just how smart we really can be.
textbooks refer to babbage's differential machine, or even the eniac as the world's first computer. When I beg to differ, I cite the Antekythera (or however ya spell ti) mechanism. opens a few eyes as to just how smart we really can be.
ENIAC and Babbage's analytic engine (quite different from his differential engine) were programmable. Antikythera is not.
By your standard the astrolab would be a computer. The Babbage machine was the first programmable (vice purpose built) digital (vice analog) computer and the Eniac was the first programmable digital electronic computer.
The slide rule was a mechanical analog computer and electronic analog computers predate Eniac. Analog digital computers were being marketed as late as the 1990’s. They were cheaper per calculation than competing digital computers for some problems.
As recently as twenty years ago, a lot of things that are done by commercial computers nowadays required purpose built circuitry.