I understand the point they're making but it's wrong: a computer doesn't have to be universal, to be a computer, neither does having a fixed program, like the Antikythera mechanism, disqualify a device from being a computer. In the same sense, Turing Machines are not necessarily universal; Universal Turing Machines are. But there's no official or formal definition of what a "computer" is and the category is less crisp than the author is trying to make it.

In the same way drawing a line between programmable and fixed-program computer is arbitrary and in fact the author spends much of the article dismissing Babbage's Analytical engine, which was a programmable computer, on the grounds it wasn't actually built; which is, of course, irrelevant, because a physical machine is not necessary for complete computation, as demonstrated by Ada Lovelace.

In any case, the early days of modern computing (1930's- 1940's) were replete with a plethora of computing machinery of various architectures many of which were called "computers", without them being necessarily programmable computers; for example, the "Atanassoff-Berry Computer" [1].

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff%E2%80%93Berry_comput...

Did you read the article? Universality is explicitly rejected as a criterion.

The point is there is a fundamental difference between a computing device which performs a single algorithm and a computer which can perform programmed algorithms.

How about a device that can perform more than one computation then? e.g. the Antikythera mechanism could calculate the motion of the planets, and, separately, eclipses. Universality is the only characteristic that makes a difference, but I think the author avoids this because they don't want to be caught up in debates about whether modern computers are truly universal.

The article is trying to make the distinction between what is, and isn't a "computer" sound crisp and exact, when it's arbitrary and ad-hoc.

Yes, more or less. To quote another commenter in another thread, " an open definition of what a computer is, is too inclusive and uninteresting if you want to talk about the history of actual computers".