Before the teeming, seething (and Unca CeCe-stalking) masses rise up in protest of the Grand Master, let me qualify!
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Before Christopher Columbus, the ‘correct’ answer to the earth’s geometry would have been ‘flat.’
Before HP, IBM and Dell in the last 50+ years a computer was virtually nonexistent.
Before LED technology the flourescent (my kingdom for spell-check) bulb was one of the best economical commercial lighting solutions…
Before the remote-controlled vibrating egg – er, I digress…
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Now, not to give rise to speculation on Uncle Cecil’s years (wise and wonderous - or at least creative! as they may be), but what subject(s) did our Great Leader answer correctly in his formative years that are incorrect now?
Before Christopher Columbus, the ‘correct’ answer to the earth’s geometry would have been 'flat.'
Eratosthenes (276-194 bc) accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth. Aristotles also gives a somewhat accurate figure. From antiquity to Columbus educated people knew the Earth was a sphere, and they knew how big it was. Columbus was wrong about its size, though.
Before HP, IBM and Dell in the last 50+ years a computer was virtually nonexistent.
The computer was invented in the 1670’s by Leibniz. This, of course, was a mechanical and not electronic computer, but nevertheless it wasn’t fundamentally different from modern machines. As I read somewhere, you don’t need machines to do computer sciences. A roomfull of people will do the job.
There were many independent inventions of computers, dating back to the ancient Greeks who had devised a mechanical contraption to calculate the position of the planets. None of these were effective inventions of the computer in much the same way that the many peoples who discovered the New World did not do so in a way that truly appreciated the discovery in a way significant to exploit it into perpetuity, which Columbus did. (Or, as may have been pointed out, it may be that Columbus merely understood the significance of some earlier explorer’s discovery.)
Babbage invented a number of computing machines, none of which took, but which clearly shows that he understood the full significance of what he was trying to do. Everyone else just grew tired of it.
Various general computers, Eniac and Colossus and I think Univac, were developed from the late 30s and into the 40s which were electronic and could be programed to do a variety of things, as opposed to special purpose machines that census takers developed. An English postal clerk described the design for the Colossus and Alan Turing during this time period defined what a general computer was, and there you have it.
That’s not to say that Leibniz wasn’t a very smart cookie, and his relative obscurity is very undeserved, he was a groundbreaker in every field he entered, making him a polymath, but he did not invent the computer.
::groans:: Okay, ye seething teeming masses. Suffice to say that had I anticipated the nitpicking (and that’s why we’re here, after all!) I would’ve said something about before and after genetic cloning, and that type of thing.
I plead mass generalization regarding the computer (in fact an abacus can be by some definitions considered a computer) and I knew that was non-accurate statement because I actually WORK in the computer field. I do plead ignorance regarding the earth’s geometry - I did not (having never researched the subject) realize that it was so widely accepted and/or proven that the earth was a sphere prior to CC’s explorations (though I did know there were THEORIES). And of course I’m surprised nobody has brought up the theoretical viking migration!
Aside from all of that, which was simply for example purposes, I was simply wondering what evolution in technology, etc. has caused UC to be (retroactively) wrong…
