I was once criticized for saying that Charles Babbage was the inventor of the computer. My critic argued that Babbage’s proposed computer was entirely mechanical (wheels, gears, and mechanical linkages) and that a real computer has to be electrical. Was my critic correct?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

I believe not.

There is no fundamental rule that states that a machine such as a computer must have a preferred embodiment. A computer can be mechanical, electronic, quantum mechanical, biological, or chemical. What is required to implement a computer (as we understand the term) is a means of:

• storing information (memory),
• reading information from memory,
• decoding the information,
• executing the instructions corresponding to this information,
• writing back the information.

Moreover, for a computer to perform general?purpose tasks, it must be capable of conditional behavior; that is, the result of one operation must select between two or more alternative courses of action. Otherwise, the computer would always execute the same sequence of operations irrespective of the data.

Of course, a practical computer cannot be mechanical because of the slowness of moving parts compared to electrons in solids. However, one day mechanical computer may be created by using movement at the atomic level (e.g., changing the position of atoms in a crystal or moving nanotubes).