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 :)
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.
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.
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.