What was the first computer? Well, that depends a lot on what you mean by computer.
I mean, we're all used to stored program, general purpose, digital computers,
but those have only been around for less than a hundred years.
The first, ENIAC, or the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer,
was created for the U.S. military and was completed only in 1945.
By the literal meaning of the word, a computer is a person or tool that makes calculations.
People whose primary role is to quickly do large amounts of math have existed
as long as complex societies have, thanks to things like taxes.
However, if we want to know what the first formal computational tool was,
well, an obvious candidate is the abacus.
Neither of those feels like a satisfying answer, though, and you probably wouldn't accept either in a game of trivia.
If you were on my team, yes, but if I was playing against you, definitely not.
If we instead take computer to mean a machine designed to model and solve a theoretical problem,
well, the first known computer is still surprisingly ancient.
The Antikythera mechanism is a bronze mechanical device about the size of a large book
that was discovered in 1901 inside of a Greek shipwreck that sank over 2,000 years ago.
The device was found to contain surprisingly small interlocking gears,
the largest being five inches in diameter. And it was later determined to be a kind of hand-cranked analog computer.
Its purpose was, most likely, to calculate how the positions of the sun, the moon,
and the known planets would change with the passage of time, allowing the user to predict eclipses.
Keep in mind that this was back when academics had the Earth in the center of the planetary system,
rather than the sun. So if this thing was in any way accurate, it must have been crazy complicated.
While it's unlikely that this kind of complex mechanism was common 2,000 years ago,
it raises the possibility that other oddly advanced devices from the era once existed
and have simply been lost to time. We do know of other simpler devices from this time, like the planisphere,
a type of adjustable star chart that can show which stars will be visible on a given date,
and the astrolabe, another kind of star chart which could be used to track heavenly bodies
and solve spherical trigonometry problems, making it useful for navigation.
But the Greeks aren't the only ancient civilization where we've discovered evidence of early analog
computers. According to Chinese writings, engineer Ma Jun created what is called a
south-pointing chariot in the third century. This was a mechanical device, stylized to look like a doll pointing its finger.
The doll would sit atop the roof of your chariot, and it would point continuously
in one direction, no matter which way the chariot turned. Now to do this, it used a differential gear that would compensate for the turning of the
wheels, keeping the device pointed the same direction it was set to at the beginning of
the journey. For cultural reasons, they were set to point south.
If that seems odd, just remember, modern magnetic compasses don't actually point
north. They align themselves with the globe's magnetic field, meaning they point both north
and south. We just think of them as only pointing north for our own arbitrary cultural reasons.
In any case, this kind of old-school GPS had some pretty serious limitations.
With modern technology, we can create extremely precise gears. But small inconsistencies in these
third-century gears would compound over the course of even relatively short journeys,
causing the device to gradually drift over time. Realistically, you'd only be able to travel
a few miles before that drift became significant, and its orientation would need to be reset.
And that's before the gears started to wear unevenly with use. Also, a mechanical device
that can only solve one problem, where is south, is pretty limited. So what was the first programmable
machine? One possible candidate for the world's first programmable machine is found in the Book
of Ingenious Devices, which was written by the Banu Musa brothers of Persia, and published in the
year 850. The book describes a number of mechanical devices, including an automatic water fountain,
hot and cold running taps, and a pressure sensor. They also included a steam-powered flute and a
water-powered organ. Both instruments could be programmed by swapping out a cylinder with raised
pins indicating notes in order to play different music. You can find a similar cylinder mechanism
in modern-day wind-up music boxes, which have largely been replaced with TikTok.
Arguably, the first analog computers that wound up widely used by the average person were clocks.
Human beings have been trying to devise more and more precise methods of measuring time for
thousands of years, using everything from shadows to water to sand to incense to candles to gravity.
Tried basically everything. While the average hunter or farmer probably didn't need to know
what time it was beyond morning, noon, and night, just try to imagine running a government without
clocks. How are you supposed to schedule a meeting? You could try a pigeon-based conference call,
but you just know that none of your scribes are wearing pants, and it's just icky.
The first known clock, with gears, goes back to the 3rd century BC, a century prior to the
Antikythera mechanism, and was created by the mathematician Archimedes. It was water-powered,
like many earlier clocks, but it also blew a whistle. And it made a little model owl flap its
wings to mark the hour, making it kind of the world's first cuckoo clock. So kudos to him.
Fully mechanical clocks wouldn't arise until the 12th century.
Mechanical calculators wouldn't come about until the 17th.
An odd aspect of the history of these kinds of devices is that they were variously invented,
lost, rediscovered, reinvented, and passed back and forth between different civilizations.
In the modern day, we tend to take for granted that the invention of the steam engine kicked
off the industrial revolution, and that the invention of the programmable loom inevitably led
to the general-purpose digital computer. And at the risk of going a bit off topic,
it's notable that not only did ancient engineers create a number of astonishing analog devices in
complex machines, they also created their own steam engine. Writings from the 1st century BCE
by Roman architect Vitruvius describe a kind of simple steam engine. While it couldn't have been
particularly powerful or efficient, it both worked and produced torque. With the information we have,
it's unclear if this engine or anything like it was ever put to practical use. It may have been
just a novelty or educational device used to demonstrate the physics of weather. It's fun
to imagine, however, what would have happened if ancient scholars had continued developing this
kind of tech? Could we have had an industrial revolution that began in ancient Greece rather
than in 18th century Britain? Or, alternatively, will we wind up losing the knowledge we have now
only to rediscover it in another 2,000 years? Quick, print out this video's automatically
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you disliked it. Check out this one, where we explain the difference between an analog and a
digital computer. You probably already knew that, though. You're so smart.