For Those Who Thought That Alan Turing Developed the First "Pre Computer"

[audioguy]

This device is 240 years old and you will be blown away by what it can do - at least I was. The human mind is just incredible.

http://www.chonday.com/Videos/the-writer-automaton

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Fascinating, astonishing, pure genius.

 

[das]

This device is 240 years old and you will be blown away by what it can do - at least I was. The human mind is just incredible.

This is fascinating, but I believe what Turing was credited with insofar as inspiring the modern-day computer wasn't necessarily building a machine that does specific tasks, but a machine that could be programmed to do a variety of tasks. In a modern-day computer, you have hardware and software. The two are completely linked, but the software runs on the hardware and that's what makes the hardware tick. Prior to Turing, as far as I know, machines were built such that they were very task specific. He saw the hardware and software separation, resulting in computer machines that were far more versatile.

That doesn't take away from what this is, just that's to clear up Turing and the computer. That's my understanding, anyway.

Doug Schneider
SoundStage!

 

[amirm]

Incredible feat of mechanical engineering. As some may know, Pierre Jaquet-Droz's work was the inspiration for the Automaton that was built for the movie Hugo:

The automaton in the movie though was computer controlled but the shot of it from the back shows incredible similarity to the work of Pierre.

Thanks for posting this. It was a fun watch.