Computer Is A Surprisingly Old Word

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[NameExplain]

Suggest a topic for next Monday's video!

[drakmatheism]

Originally, the word "Computer" was an extremely formal synonym for "Calculator".

[Orinslayer]

You dont have to go that far back, my grandma was a computer and she was born in 1926. 😊

[kittyprydekissme]

Years ago, I read an anthology of classic science fiction stories. It was a library book and I only read it once, so I don't remember the title or author of the story I'm remembering, but it involved an interplanetary space mission and one of the characters was the ship's computer. That was his job title. He was a normal human. I remember the copyright for that story was from the 1930s. So just before electronic computers began.

A good example of a modern term with an old meaning would be 'broadcasting'.

[jensschroder]

Often forgotten, the German Konrad Zuse made his computer out of telephone relays in 1941. The Z3 was a programmable binary floating point computer. He used this to calculate the wing flutter of airplanes. In 1950 he installed the Z4 at ETH Zurich. Zuse later also manufactured computers using tube technology.
The company was later merged into Siemens Computer. Later Fjutsu Siemens ...

[HerculeYakko]

A lot of Among Us players have been surprised they didn't invent the word sus in 2020.

[lesterstone]

Mac Book is a surprisingly old word, too! It goes back to a Scottish member of the Book clan. 🤣 Olde Angus MacBook.

[samwill]

Took me far too long to even get to the point of realizing the word computer means "an object that computes"

[lp-xlld]

I took a computer programming course in high school during the 1978-79 academic year. At that time, I was taught "computers are for computing". There WERE other things you could do with them (not that many, I'll concede, but they were there) but the teacher I had didn't want to hear about them.

[ssatva]

7:23 on... didn't realize how much I needed a bit of peace and quiet, thanks! 😁

[falcoskywolf]

Bunches of technological items have names in Greek or Latin roots. Tele(scope, vision, phone, ) for example. Same with microscope, etc. Even electricity (and all of its derivatives like electronics) comes from Greek "elektrum, " for amber, because someone noticed that rubbing wool against amber produced static. (The word amber comes from the Arabic word for the stone.)

[darreljones]

Considering its form and definition, I think the Latin word "computare" is not only the origin of English "compute", but also English "compare".

[clownpendotfart]

Turing didn't build the Colossus. Tommy Flowers did. Even though Turing was a pioneer of computing theory, the "bombes" he worked on weren't computers like the Colossus. The bombes were used against Enigma ciphers, the Colossus against Lorenz ciphers (which the Brits nicknamed "Tunny" at the time).

[EGSBiographies-omwb]

Someone didnt watch the movie *Hidden Figures*.

[jensschroder]

In German, the word "der Computer" was adopted from English when calculating machines were developed in the US.
So do many other words like Maus, Input, Output, Enter, Print, ...

[BThings]

The word I like that's similar to this is "television." It's a modern word, but I like that it uses a Greek prefix on a word that has its roots in Latin! 📺

[tzor]

I used to work in a huge building that once held computers. The Metropolitan Life building in Manhattan (by the original Madison Square) used to hold floors and floors of people, running through various calculations to determine such things as how long you were going to live and how much they needed to charge for life insurance to not suddenly go bankrupt. I was told that the building ran in shifts 24 hours a day, and the dining facility, used to keep people inside during food breaks, used to have carving stations. (Computers back then loved to eat, apparently.)

[fwiffo]

I've always taken issue with the word "computer" being applied to the Antikythera mechanism. It is not a computer in either the old or new sense of the word. Human computers, as well as mechanical or electronic computers, can carry out arbitrary calculations. A both human and non-human computers can calculate phases of the moon, but can also do accounting, or calculate missile trajectories. The Antikythera mechanism is fixed set of gears that can only display astronomical information as understood by the Greeks and Babylonians before them. It cannot perform arbitrary computations. It cannot be used for calculating taxes. In that respect, it's less of a computer than an abacus.

The mechanism is something more akin to a luxury mechanical watch with lots of complications that display the date and phase of the moon and whatnot. It's really cool, but not a computer.

[lilaspire]

In the old times, Computer was a synonym of Calculator since the words compute and calculate meant the same purpose

[waltermeerschaert]

When you think of "computer" in the old sense, it is probably closer to the word "calculator", one who calculates. I'd rather be a computer then a calculator. Console is also a very old word.