MRC_Hans
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2002
- Messages
- 24,961
So they did use a sort of silicon chip.
Ah, no. Ancient binary computers were made up from ranks of slaves. You know, initially each slave has his right hand on the left shoulder of the next in rank. That signifies 0. You tap the first slave on the left shoulder, and he raises his hand. That is 1. Now tap him again, and he puts his hand back down on the next slave's shoulder, and he raises his hand. That is 102. You now have a binary counter. Set up enough ranks of slaves, and you have a computer. It is very slow, of course, and the spreadsheet I have posted would take three weeks to recalculate. Unfortunately, this technology is limited to executing algorithms that take no longer than the time till the slaves absolutely have to be excused to go to the privy. - Which, if you don't give them too much to drink, is about 6 hours.
Sometimes, longer lasting algorithms were actually still run, and this is the real origin of the term 'messy programming'.
Hans



