Aviennca's Pupil
Banned
How would events in history be affected by the lack of computers and what would be the long term result such a gap in technological progress?
What if the computer is never invented?
- Thread starter Aviennca's Pupil
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Chapman
Donor
To never have computers invented at all would require some huge butterflies, IMO. Technological progress isn't necessarily a straight line, so it's not a given that computers "as we know them", so to speak, would always exist. But I do think it's a given that, as time goes on and technology evolves in any form, machines used for increasingly complex calculations will come into existence. That said, though, if no such machines do come into existence, the pace of technological progress will be much much slower. Not only due to those complex calculations, that'll take longer to solve, but the inability to communicate as quickly as we can with computers.
Butterflying out personal computers would be easier than getting rid of computers altogether. But, I would argue, that this is still hard.
However, mechanical computing devices have been around since Classical times.
However, mechanical computing devices have been around since Classical times.
I find it hard to believe you wouldn't get one of those room-sized computers at some point. It's just too useful to have around for so many purposes (engineering, military, etc.). An early computer is a logical advancement of finding easier ways to do math that began thousands of years ago with the abacus, in the form of combining it with electricity and vacuum tubes.
Why wouldn't it be possible to send people into space without computers? If you have a room full of computers (people whose job title is computer that is), you can solve the complex math and physics problems needed to shoot a person into orbit and retrieve them safely.
And while computers are integral to modern society nowadays and have been since the 90s at latest, I don't see how first-world living standards would necessarily be stagnant. You still have typewriters, fax machines, mechanical calculators, and cell phones, which will gradually filter their way into businesses and homes as production costs go down.
Why wouldn't it be possible to send people into space without computers? If you have a room full of computers (people whose job title is computer that is), you can solve the complex math and physics problems needed to shoot a person into orbit and retrieve them safely.
And while computers are integral to modern society nowadays and have been since the 90s at latest, I don't see how first-world living standards would necessarily be stagnant. You still have typewriters, fax machines, mechanical calculators, and cell phones, which will gradually filter their way into businesses and homes as production costs go down.
MrP
Banned
Wire transmission has been around since the 19th century, and the modern fax machine was patented in 1964.
Typewriters got way better as time went on though, and cheaper, as tech tends to. Fax machines are a 19th century technology, although the first efficient ones weren't until the 1960s--I'm pretty sure you can have a Xerox machine without computers.
And the Pantelograph since the 1860's
The pantelegraph (Italian: pantelegrafo; French: pantélégraphe) was an early form of facsimile machine transmitting over normal telegraph lines developed by Giovanni Caselli, used commercially in the 1860s, that was the first such device to enter practical service, It could transmit handwriting, signatures, or drawings within an area of up to 150 × 100 mm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantelegraph
The pantelegraph (Italian: pantelegrafo; French: pantélégraphe) was an early form of facsimile machine transmitting over normal telegraph lines developed by Giovanni Caselli, used commercially in the 1860s, that was the first such device to enter practical service, It could transmit handwriting, signatures, or drawings within an area of up to 150 × 100 mm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantelegraph
Perhaps another good question would be ... "What if the microchip had not been invented?"
Painting quickly with a very broad brush, perhaps many civilizations on other planets never got around to the micro processor. What would their technology be like? They hit the wall. Never jumped over it. We have. Yikes!
Painting quickly with a very broad brush, perhaps many civilizations on other planets never got around to the micro processor. What would their technology be like? They hit the wall. Never jumped over it. We have. Yikes!
Even the absence of electricity won't do the job. Babbage's Difference and Analytical engines come to rule the world.
Punch cards & similar data storage, can run on mechanical devices.
So the world looks something like the early seasons of Mad Men
American culture stagnates sometime around 1963 and there's a global nuclear war in October 2077.
marathag
Banned
You can do Computers without the microchip
Backplane of a late '60s Minicomputer, the PDP-8 from DEC
I used to work on that syle of 'Big Iron' for Sperry, those yellow traces are 30 guage wire making the circuit, and this was all done by hand.
Wirewrapping didn't go away till the late '70s.
Thats one of the reason why these guys took up so much room.
No computers mean no small chips that make the cell phones work. The Japanese for using fax machines in the 30s
Perhaps another good question would be ... "What if the microchip had not been invented?"
Painting quickly with a very broad brush, perhaps many civilizations on other planets never got around to the micro processor. What would their technology be like? They hit the wall. Never jumped over it. We have. Yikes!
Now I'm picturing computers so massive they have to be put in orbiting space stations like in 2001.