Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by tolmasky on Friday March 01, 2013 @04:21AM (#5303488)

I think the point of the article was "Could Romans build a computer, if plans were magically given to them?". Given this, the critique I am about to make is a little outside the scope of this thought experiment. However, I've wondered about questions like this a lot before, and I think it is also interesting to consider that the Romans (possibly) had many conceptual hurdles to cross as well. I am not a historian, but it seems that given their numeral system, they would not have had a firm understanding of mathematical bases, and thus would have not understood the importance of diodes/transistors/etc since they would have had to make the conceptual leap of representing numbers (and all information!) in binary (base 2). It's interesting to think about what obvious inventions we may not realize today due to the way we represent certain forms of information.

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Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by xmodem on Friday March 01, 2013 @07:47AM (#5303949)

Interesting point. I wonder if you can flip that around and ask if there are any otherwise obvious inventions we don't have.

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Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by armored_mammal on Friday March 01, 2013 @12:47PM (#5305724)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermae_Romae

Apparently they could build bath amazing bath houses because of time traveling to modern Japan.

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Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by DanBC on Friday March 01, 2013 @08:00AM (#5304002)

I agree that Roman numerals would make computers interesting. But if we extend the thought experiment to Greeks + Romans, could they have had some other kind of computing?

It might not have been binary. It might not have been digital, but analogue.

I don't know anything about philosophy but Zeno's Arrow Paradox shows the strength of analogue thinking.

> It's interesting to think about what obvious inventions we may not realize today due to the way we represent certain forms of information.

I've only recently learnt that in Russian there are different words for "blue", and that these are seen as different colours, not just lighter or darker shades of the same colour.

And while it's good that we have so much processing power it does tend to mean that we just throw more processors at something, rather than designing a radically new architecture for specific domains.

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Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by rational_indian on Friday March 01, 2013 @10:35AM (#5304754)

I think Greeks + Romans + Indians increases the odds significantly.

The Indians had an understanding of the required math...

1. Binary numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_number#History 2. Zero: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)#India 3. A brief history of Indian mathematics: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html

This combined with the engineering skills of the other civilizations could have in theory heralded the digital age a little sooner :)

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Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by TDL on Friday March 01, 2013 @11:58AM (#5305391)

I also believe there was extensive trade between Romans & Indian societies so it is entirely feasible that some exchange could have occurred.

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Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by ars on Friday March 01, 2013 @01:09PM (#5305870)

> I've only recently learnt that in Russian there are different words for "blue", and that these are seen as different colours, not just lighter or darker shades of the same colour.

That's true in English as well. Pink is really just light red.

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Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by latterd on Friday March 01, 2013 @07:41AM (#5303935)

Have you seen: "The Two-Thousand-Year-Old Computer?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01hlkcq

Amazing stuff!

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Re:Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? by redwood on Saturday March 02, 2013 @05:00PM (#5311272)

I see the Roman numerals as actually more like binary than our decimal system. Then again their system has a lack of uniformity

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