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Charles Babbage


sparhawk

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Uh, Oh! Charles Babagge's machine DOES work. There was a 100 year celebration some years ago (don't remember the date and can't be bothered to look it up right now) where a museum built it as a proof of concept. They even built it with tools that have been available at that time. The major problem with this machine, though was that it was extremly expensive, so it couldn't be built at that time. I seem to remember that Charles B. even invented a printer or something for that machine. :)

 

There is no requirement on a CPU to be electric. :) I had a hungerian collegue on a project who designed a waterpowered CPU like system as a master thesis. :)

 

Cool, I didn't know it worked. What happened, did he never get the resources to build it?

 

Yes. That was the problem. I rember reading something that it costed about as much as a full steam train would have cost at that time, which was VERY expensive. IMO it would have taken about a fiscal years of income from the state or something like that. Don't quite me on the numbers, though. :)

 

There was an article in Scientific America at this time about it.

Gerhard

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It would have meant that the centre of computing development was the UK, not the USA or Japan (later). We would have continued our international dominance into the computerized era, instead of having America take over after the collapse of the Empire.

come on - the centre of technology was always Germany. :P The Americans have just 'stolen' our scientists and technologies ;)

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yeah, like your advanced tech won all those wars...oh no wait, YOU LOST!!!!

 

ahem.

 

 

I don't want to discuss this, cauze I'm glad that Nazi Germany lost the war, eventhough it was certainly not because of advanced technologies of the allies.

 

That was Germany.

 

and Austria....don't forget Hitler was from Austria.....

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But Germany took him in. :)

 

But I'm currently reading the diaries of Goebbels and this is really frightening. I always have to think how today would be if they would have stopped the war after some time. I always think that, if they wouldn't have become crazy and tried to swallow everything they might have ended up with half of Europe and nobody opposing them. Because in the beginning he other countries just accepted it and as is the way with diplomacy they would have adjusted to Big Germany without any problems.

Gerhard

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I'm often surprised by how much of a guilt complex some young Germans have about the Nazis. There was a German guy on the ISA forums who was almost grovelling to be forgiven, even though his grandfather opposed the nazis and helped jews escape.

I can't imagine what must be in the minds of those who's grandfathers were actually nazis or gestapo officers and were responsible for murdering 1000 people or something.

Of course it's nothing to do with them, but they can hardly ignore it either.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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