Abstract
Some recent discussions [1,2,3,4,5] have suggested that the concept of universal stored program computer is not useful in understanding the history of computing. In particular, there is the suggestion that this idea was so well known that all of the early computing devices already incorporated this concept. Here, we argue that all or almost all of the early digital machines were based on the idea of a calculator and that the computer was a real and significant new concept. We attempt to explain the differences between calculator and computer, and try to show that our contemporary computing is based on the computer rather than the calculator, and that the calculator model is inadequate to describe our current notions of computing.
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Cull, P. (2018). The Computer and the Calculator. In: Moreno-Díaz, R., Pichler, F., Quesada-Arencibia, A. (eds) Computer Aided Systems Theory – EUROCAST 2017. EUROCAST 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10671. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74718-7_29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74718-7_29
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