Questions tagged [computers]
For question related to computers (including both analog and digital and both mechanical and electronic), calculators and any machines used for computation.
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What is a 100,000 qubit computer? [closed]
IBM announced they are close to developing a 100,000 qubit computer. Can you explain in lay terms how a qubit computer differs from today's pcs and supercomputers, and why it is a challenge to ...
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Bit as eighth of dollar vs Shannon's Binary Digit?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit#History does not mention the common usage of bit being an eighth of a dollar -- surely Shannon was inspired by this?
This question was asked in 2019 in English ...
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Before the Colossus and the ENIAC, did ever an electronic calculator exist?
I've done some searching on the internet, and I found that an electronic analog computer was built in 1942 in Germany, during World War II. But, before the first electronic computer, weren't there ...
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How did Mathew Bevan acquire hacking skill without belonging to military or national agencies? [closed]
This my post may be inappropriate since math may be irrelevant in this topic.
I've read this article of wikipedia of the hacker called Mathew Bevan.
Seemingly the ariticle has not specified how Bevan ...
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Has Turing's invention of Turing machines contributed to the development of real computers?
Has Turing's invention of Turing machines contributed to the development of real computers, which resulted in the personal computers we currently use?
I often saw it mentioned that this is an ...
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Did von Neumann consider the brain an analogue computer?
In this article, about an unfinished book by von Neumann (he died in 1957 before he could finish it), one can read:
After stating that he himself is neither a neurologist nor a psychiatrist, but a ...
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von Neumann vignette on early computer usage
I'm looking for a vignette about von Neumann. My recollection is as follows but my google-fu is not bringing up anything.
von Neumann, having prodigious mathematical capacity even of the most mundane ...
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Are there other articles by Ada Lovelace than translation of Menabrea's notes on Analytical Engine?
Ada Lovelace is well known as an translator of Luigi's Menabrea article on Babbage's Analytical engine. She also added notes to the translation which are in the end longer than the translation itself. ...
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Finding sources for "computers will become so powerful that special functions will become obsolete" as a zeitgeist
In Why are special functions special [Physics Today 54, 11 (2007); eprint], Michael Berry makes the following observations:
This continuing and indeed increasing reliance on special functions is a ...
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Was a work of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage inspiration for pioneers of modern computing?
Recently, I came across a book about Grace Hopper where it is stated that Howard Aiken wanted her to become familiar with papers by Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage as he considered some of Babbage's ...
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Why were early electronic computers mutually incompatible?
At the beginning of the electronic computing era in the 1950s, computers were mutually incompatible both in terms of hardware and software. It was impossible to use peripherals (e.g. punched card or ...
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What was the first electronic computer?
I would like to know what is considered to be the first electronic digital computer.
A literature ambiguous on this. I found these claims:
ENIAC - a computer constructed by Mr. Eckert and Mr. ...
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When did computer pioneers realize that some problems are intrinsically hard?
In my theory computation class, I was told that early computer pioneers didn't realize that some problems are intrinsically hard—what we now call NP-hard problems. Instead, it took a while to realize ...
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What technology did researchers use to write scientific papers before the computer?
As I'm reading a scientific paper from 1964, I'm wondering how researchers were able to write papers without the use of a computer. Cursive fonts, different font sizes, math, etc. are all present in ...
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What was worldwide supply of disk storage in 1969?
I'd prefer a year-by-year graph, something like (not necessarily the "demand", just "supply")...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/751749/worldwide-data-storage-capacity-and-demand/
...
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What technologies were used before JavaScript?
I made a small research about the history before JavaScript was available to use, but I couldn't find much. I only found several plugins that was used, such as Adobe Flash, ActiveX.
So, what I want ...
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Overflow behavior in turn counters of Odhner-style arithmometers
I have a Felix M Arithmometer (shown below) that appears to follow the same design as an Odhner arithmometer.
One thing I noticed about the device is that the turn counter (on the left) does not ...
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Was there an intentional purge of all audio recordings of Alan Turing?
The YouTube video Alan Turing's lost radio broadcast rerecorded contains a re-enactment of Alan Turing's lecture broadcast by the BBC.
In the introduction, the narrator (James Grimes, also of the ...
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Who first invented the programmable digital computer?
I read Charles Babbage invented the first mechanical computer (the Analytic Engine) and that Ada Lovelace devised the first computer programs.
Also I realize John Von Neumann invented the first ...
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What/When was the first radio nav system capable of triangulating your position?
What was the first radio navigation system capable of triangulating your position, and when was it built? How accurate was it and what was its range?
This does not have to be GPS or a satellite ...
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When did William (Bill) Burke, who discovered the first actual bug, live and die?
Grace Hopper is frequently credited with finding the first actual bug. In fact, she just popularized the story of how William (Bill) Burke found the bug in the Mark II computer and documented it.
I'...
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To constructivists, is "mind" more than a convenient synonym for "algorithm"?
I could give (but, not being a professional historian, nor a native Dutch speaker, only few) references and background-remarks, but I will keep this short, to make more use of what a Q&A-sites ...
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Did Leibniz also design analog computers?
My question is based on the information that appears in several websites, according to which I found three examples of a kind of instrument that was probably an analog computer. The first one ...
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Earliest concrete example of a binary / digital computing device
I am trying to trace (as far as known) the first example of a digital computing device. I am discounting (no pun) an abacus because I regard that as a device for representing, storing and manipulating ...
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Essential basic geometrical discoveries still possible in our era?
Can we imagine that scientific can still discover some basic simple but essential geometric rules such as the Pythagorean theorem in a near of far future:
$a^2 + b^2 = c^2$
Or do we consider that ...
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Did Turing know of Babbage's work?
Did Turing have any knowledge of Babbage's work? Is it known if he ever mentioned Babbage?
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Did Leibniz sketch a design for a machine capable of solving a system of linear equations?
My question is based on the information on pages 108-109 of the book The Tangled Origins of the Leibnizian Calculus. I know that Leibniz
invented the stepped drum and used it to build the stepped ...
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Is it true that Stephen Hawking got the computer with his wheelchair by coincidence?
In the recent movie about Stephen Hawking it is displayed that it is a coincidence that he got a computer with his wheelchair: Some friend was a computer engineer and installed the computer for him.
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How many computers are there?
There are about 7.13 billion humans alive today.
When installing Java, it says that 3 billion devices run Java. The question is, out of how many? How many computing devices that have enough ...
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Why were British WWII computing machines and their projects destroyed after the war ended?
I've seen from a number of sources that both the Colossus and the cryptological bombes operating for England were dismantled after the war ended. The Wikipedia article even says that all of Colossus' ...
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Is the modern "is defined as" notation from computer programming?
To my knowledge, the symbol for "is defined as" historically has been the notation, $\equiv$ or $\triangleq$. More recently, however, the notation $:=$ seems to have overtaken the latter two notations ...
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What happened to analog computers?
When was the last analog computer developed? What about one that is still in use (as in computation or experiment)? Were there major improvement done from the day digital computers became so popular?
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