General / Off-Topic So, which is the greatest computing device ever built by humankind?

[STABB666]

So, which is the greatest computing device ever built by humankind?

Based on nothing more than personal preference of use, impact on technological advancement, significance in history, or it sounds cool.

Totally arbitrary choices taken from memory, but since there’s only 20 options, this is all I chose.

BBC Micro
Antikythera Device
The abacus
Fingers
Amiga
Commodore C64
ZX Spectrum
Amstrad 464
IBM
Apple II
Acorn A7000
Atari ST
Commodore Vic-20
NEC
RM 380
“Simon”
CDC6600
Tianhe-2
The Earth
Pascal’s Calculator

 

[JazHaz]

its gotta be the BBC micro, as we all wouldn't be here without it...

 

[STABB666]

Learned me some programs.

its gotta be the BBC micro, as we all wouldn't be here without it...

A truly outstanding pillar of modern computing. Certainly the bedrock upon which much of the worlds devices are founded.

 

[Cathy]

I would choose the computers in the sheds at Bletchley Park that broke **** Germany's codes.

edit: crikey, that word's banned. Um... the ones who wore jackboots and swastikas. Third Reich types.

 

[STABB666]

Not to be sniffed at...

I would choose the computers in the sheds at Bletchley Park that broke **** Germany's codes.

A good thought, definitely had an impact on world history...


edit: Hmmm...lets' see...Rosa Kaninchen Fuffy

more edit: Seems that the filter is English only?

furthermore edits: Ninja mods on the prowl...lol

 

[Cathy]

A good thought, definitely had an impact on world history...


edit: Hmmm...lets' see...Rosa Kaninchen Fuffy

more edit: Seems that the filter is English only?

testing testing... National Socialists ...

just the four-letter one apparently.

 

[JeffRyan]

My boy.

 

[Associat0r]

B5000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems#B5000

 

[Magma]

I would choose the computers in the sheds at Bletchley Park that broke **** Germany's codes.

edit: crikey, that word's banned. Um... the ones who wore jackboots and swastikas. Third Reich types.

I went to Bletchley Park very recently. They're doing it up a bit, but it's still well worth visiting. The guided tours are worth attending if you can, as you get to hear a lot of the back story of the site and its occupants. I'd certainly rate the Colossus a close second in this contest for its ability to be programmed, with the Antikythera mechanism taking first place.

You have an astonishingly complicated analogue computer made several thousand years ago, which was crudely copied in the ancient Islamic world to make simpler devices, which were themselves crudely copied in medieval Europe to make even simpler ones, eventually leading to crude clockmaking, which is now sufficiently advanced enough to figure out what the hell the Greeks were doing in the first place. It took the Human race two thousand years to rediscover the technology and mathematics behind how that thing worked, and another hundred or so years to notice its significance.

Kind of like how we invented the machine gun only to discover that the Romans invented the "Polybolos" auto-ballista a couple of millennia ago as well.

 

[Frank]

"Deep Thought" is more powerful than "The Earth". Its works got gummed up when a bunch of Golgafrinchans crash landed on it.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

The BBC B is worth a vote, as it Colossus - the machine used to crack the Enigma codes at Bletchly Park but for the greatest device in my opinion you have to go back to where it all began with Babbage's Difference Engine.

 

[izzy]

I've voted Amiga and Atari, I played a lot these computer. My brother still have an Amiga 2000 and an Atari 520

 

[Cathy]

I went to Bletchley Park very recently. They're doing it up a bit, but it's still well worth visiting. The guided tours are worth attending if you can, as you get to hear a lot of the back story of the site and its occupants. I'd certainly rate the Colossus a close second in this contest for its ability to be programmed, with the Antikythera mechanism taking first place.

You have an astonishingly complicated analogue computer made several thousand years ago, which was crudely copied in the ancient Islamic world to make simpler devices, which were themselves crudely copied in medieval Europe to make even simpler ones, eventually leading to crude clockmaking, which is now sufficiently advanced enough to figure out what the hell the Greeks were doing in the first place. It took the Human race two thousand years to rediscover the technology and mathematics behind how that thing worked, and another hundred or so years to notice its significance.

Kind of like how we invented the machine gun only to discover that the Romans invented the "Polybolos" auto-ballista a couple of millennia ago as well.

What fascinates me most about these things (being the non-tech that I am) is how both ancient knowledge and expertise can be lost through accident and decline, and how the British managed to keep their computing successes a secret until the 1970s.

 

[Magma]

I think it's more interesting that the man who designed Colossus, Tommy Flowers, was told by the government that they wouldn't build it because they thought it would be too unreliable. In the day, transistors did not exist and vacuum valves had to be used instead, but as an engineer at the Post Office (who used to run the telephone systems in the UK at the time), he knew they worked fine as long as you kept them always on and at a stable temperature.

Tommy just went back to work and got the staff at the Post Office Research Station to help him build Colossus without support from the government. He paid for most of the equipment.

Because of his tireless work and refusal to admit defeat, we were always able to hear what German High Command were doing (they used something more complicated than the Enigma machine which only Colossus could decrypt efficiently).

After the war he was given an award by the government of an amount of money that was less than his personal expenditure, and when he tried to gain funding to build similar computers in the commercial world he was always turned down because nobody believed he could build such a machine, despite him having built many already. As a signatory of the Official Secrets Act, he could not tell anyone his remarkable achievement and had to sit quiet while others claimed the title and profits from being the makers of the world's first programmable computers. Nobody, not even his family, knew just how important his work was for winning the war until nearly 30 years later when the Colossus was declassified.