Could such devices be made back in the society stage with enough care?
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Kinda. Not on any kind of scale. Basically, because standardization was fully lacking or pathetic (measuring things with body parts and barleycorns tends to do that) youâd need every part made in a single workshop, basically you can enforce a standardization that says all screw holes are the same size by having them all made with the same tool. You couldnât scale up past the Z1, and everything would need to be reinvented every time you wanted a new computer. Software wouldnât be a thing for certain. The Curta Calculator or a slide rule would be relatively practical, but itâd be a novelty for the rich made by very learned scholars who probably donât need a calculator that badly.
Oh and weâre assuming everyone is very smart and just figured out the theory behind this stuff. It isnât impossible but is a bit unlikely.
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Oddly enough, the Mechanical Computer way predates the Mechanical Calculator. Mechanical Astronomical Clocks date back to 100 BC as far as we know. The first Mechanical Adding Device was in the 1600âs.
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Wasnât that the computer made with the purpose of calculating the location of things on the night sky?
How far can the definition of a mechanical computer even be stretched?
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Wikipedia lists it as a mechanical computer, so I did as well.
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Would âbiological computersâ count as an alternative technology?
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Arenât brains biological computers?
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I mean more like âneural tissuesâ being shaped by some sapient species to serve the role of computers
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Iâd say the best bet on doing that (without ) is to take a trainable, be non-stupid, very low energy animal that ainât stupid, and train it to do simple algorithms. Build complex ones by chaining the inputs and outputs. Iâm partial to bees. They can count to four, and are already a hive mind. This is a very bad idea by the way.
That thing was whats called an analog computer. It was also fixed function. I donât consider those computers in the modern sense. They are definitely computers in some sense though. They implement a complex algorithm. If you have enough pieces of a complex algorithm you can rearrange them and glue a lot of memory to it, youâve basically got a Turing complete thing, even if reprogramming it takes more time than using it and itâs slow as all hell. It worked for ENIAC (though that was digital). This is also, a dumb idea.
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Are there any other types of computers beyond what weâve mentioned?
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There are many types of computers: hydro computers (using water instead of electricity), mechanical computers, mouse computers, etc. But in practice, only a few are applicable and competitive with transistors.
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Those would use mice to function?
Theoretically, it is possible to create a computer where the function of transistors can be performed by mice placed in special boxes where food is placed near a mechanism that detects mouse movements.
By the way, I remembered about the âhumanâ computer from some movie, no, it was not a gathering of smart people, it was a gathering where people imitated the work of transistors with the help of colored sticks.
In any case, such computers are pointless, since they are worse than even the most primitive mechanical computers.
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Hydro computers seem interesting since theyâd need to take gravity into account. But theyâre probably very pointlessâŚ
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donât forget your serious contenders for computation too. Optical computers, quantum computers, superconducting transistor replacements, graphite transistor replacements, reversible computing, etc. And your outdated contenders, like magnetic transistor replacements, and resistor-diode logic.
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I can guess all of these could be various upgrades of the computer tech.
Btw how has been quantum computing doing?
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But by the time we get there, we may have more developer resources
That doesnât mean we should make alternative techwebs.
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additionally this sort of comment is maybe not worth starting up a discussion three months after anyone has brought it up.
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True. Discussions can do end for good reasons at times, like having discussed all the stuff about the subjectâŚ