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Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

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Re: Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

#81

Post by serans »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #70
swombat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, from what I understood from listing to a TTC lecture series about this, the "decline and fall" of the roman empire is somewhat of a fiction, in that it wasn't a brutal event, more of a long slow disintegration over the span of a thousand years. To give some sense of perspective, that's 3 times longer than the US has existed, and people have been clamouring that the US is in decline for the last 50 years. Wh…

Kind of but not entirely true - I will defer to real historians but roughly it breaks down like this 100 - 180 AD : golden age of emperors, what we think of when we think Rome 200-350 : serious decline and infighting, split into four regions, during this period attempts to enforce price controls to stem inflation. Rome itself stopped being political centre 350-400 Constantine recovery (unites to one region again - on…

I agree with you, but I think it's safe to say that contemporaries didn't think that Rome had fallen at all. As you say the western emperor felt about 400, but the Eastern lasted to 1453. Even not taking the east into consideration, the Papacy was seen as a continuation of the empire, and it was the Pope who crowned Charlemagne emperor about 800AD. Circa one hundred years later, the Holy Roman Empire was formed claiming "traslatio imperii" (that is, that there was a legitimate line of succession since the last west emperor), and it lasted until the XIX century.

Re: Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

#82

Post by jacques_chester »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #60
jacques_chester wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the case (I never watched BSG), but I'm not sure if that precludes her from writing a story in what is ultimately a very different setting. I'd also note that sometimes plots occur more than once in literature and entertainment by mere chance. Shocking, I know! Edit: having looked up the Caprica plot on Wikipedia, really, they have nothing in common.

> Shocking, I know! I didn't want to sound dismissive or snarky in any way. If I did, then I apologize. I was just providing an example of other story based on "industrialised, polytheistic society with monotheistic terrorism" :). I hope strongly that your friend will publish her novel successfully; I'm eager to read it. BTW. If you never watched BSG, I recommend it strongly (the new one). It's a masterpiece.

I was snarky too.

I mean to get around to lots of things, but there's so much other stuff to do, read, watch or play.

Re: Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

#83

Post by maxerickson »

elteto wrote: post #75
eksith wrote: post #33

They absolutely could have built a digital computer and much more. He's slightly underestimating Roman enginuity for delicate manufacturing. Consider for example the Cage cup[1]. It's an exquisite piece of art and creativity and, all things cosidered, engineering as well due to the very tight tolerences and detail. There's a lot more to progress than just the capacity for great leaps in engineering and sciences. Ofte…

> They absolutely could have built a digital computer and much more. No, absolutely not. I think you are deluding yourself. There is a long way to go from building a fancy vase or discovering the existence of the zero quantity to developing the necessary mathematical, physical and chemical framework needed to produce even the most rudimentary piece of digital technology.

An abacus is essentially digital.

Re: Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

#84

Post by serans »

swombat wrote: post #72
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of but not entirely true - I will defer to real historians but roughly it breaks down like this 100 - 180 AD : golden age of emperors, what we think of when we think Rome 200-350 : serious decline and infighting, split into four regions, during this period attempts to enforce price controls to stem inflation. Rome itself stopped being political centre 350-400 Constantine recovery (unites to one region again - on…

Well, that's the thing. Yes, the central control collapsed (though I still wouldn't underestimate the influence of the Church, which effectively controlled kings' actions through the threat of excommunication). However, on a local basis, there was no such great disaster, just a long slow change. And it was not really a dark age. As I said in my previous post, the dark age narrative is largely an invention of the 17th…

I am no historian, but what I was taught in high school is that "dark ages" are called so because of the little knowledge we have about them compared to the comparatively well documented Roman Empire and Renaissance periods, not because they were themselves "dark" in any sense.

Re: Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

#85

Post by sageikosa »

dmoo wrote: post #78
raverbashing wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cross-feeding between technologies cannot be underestimated You need metallurgy to get better at metallurgy (so you can build tools to build better tools, etc) At the same time, you need metallurgy to build delicate electronic circuits: tools, terminals, etc, be that a transistor or a relay or a tube

Slight tangent, but there is a marvelous series about this crossfeeding of technologies called 'Connections' by James Burke. Its old but still great to watch. http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesBurkeConnection?feature=wat... I can't recommend it highly enough, its worth taking the time to start at series one.

Also by Burke, "The Day the Universe Changed", Netflix had/has it through their DVD service a few years back. In that series he goes into the history of the ideas that make our modern world possible. The idea being that the day the universe changes is the day you start looking at it differently.

Re: Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

#86

Post by emiliobumachar »

alan_cx wrote: post #79

A smarty pants answer would be, yes, but it took 2000 years.... The problem with this is that you end up with lots of additions to the premise. So, you ask the question: "Could Romans build a computer, if plans were magically given to them?. Then, you have to say, if they had plans they understood, then if they had plans using a certain technology, then if they had zero, and if they had an understanding of x, then y,…

Arguably they were just an insight away from the hot-air baloon, so yes, I think there ought to be something 2000 years ahead that we can build today if we magically get the plans.

Re: Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

#89

Post by emiliobumachar »

willvarfar wrote: post #59

I don't understand the focus on tolerance for gears. Tolerance is about miniturisation and commoditisation. These are not critical-path concerns here. You could build a 'mill' analytical engine from very large wooden spars and wheels and it'd still be a mechanical digital computer. The bigger question is WHY would they build one? What purpose would it solve? Babbage wanted to reduce error in the lookup tables used by…

Physical simulations. Computer-aided design. Finance. Bookkeeping. If they also had cameras, exchanging pictures of cats

Re: Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer?

#90

Post by paganel »

swombat wrote: post #64
dublinben wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely that the greater forces responsible for the downfall of the Roman Empire would have happened regardless of what advanced technology they might have developed.

Actually, from what I understood from listing to a TTC lecture series about this, the "decline and fall" of the roman empire is somewhat of a fiction, in that it wasn't a brutal event, more of a long slow disintegration over the span of a thousand years. To give some sense of perspective, that's 3 times longer than the US has existed, and people have been clamouring that the US is in decline for the last 50 years. Wh…

I'm there with you, as in I also think that there wasn't one particular event that triggered the fall of the Roman Empire (the year Rome was sacked etc.), but the changes between the "civilized" Romans and the "barbarous" migrants/germanic/slavic populations were nevertheless huge.

For example I live in the Lower Danube area, from where the Romans retreated around 275 AD. Reading about the near-by Roman city of Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulpia_Traiana_Sarmizegetusa) it's surprising to see that only 2 generations after the retreat of the Romans the local people would revert to living in sunken huts, oftentimes a stone's throw away from the ruined Roman villas. The same people probably also lost the art of writing, because in the case I'm reading about there are no written documents or stone-graves or anything that could attest to the fact that they knew how to write for more than 700 years.

The thought that this kind of things could happen again should be on the back of our minds. For example I'm a little bit worried that more and more information about our civilization is only stored in electronic format. It suffices for us not being able to produce electricity for like 2-3 weeks and all of this will get lost.

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