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It depends on precisely what you mean by computer. Mechanical devices capable of quite complicated computations were known to and used by the ancient Greeks ... the Antithykera Mechanism, for example. Blaise Pascal invented a mechanical handheld calculator, and of course, there's the slide rule. Charles Babbage described, but never actually built, a programmable mechanical computing machine.

On the electronic side, there were electromechanical devices, analog computers that could nearly instantly "solve" very difficult problems of certain types, digital computers that were designed to solve a single very specific type of problem, computers that could be reprogrammed by rewiring them, and finally the fully programmable electronic computers that we're familiar with today.

You pays your money and you takes your choice. Wikipedia has a good article on the history of computing if you want to know more about all of these.

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Chadd Pagac

Lvl 10
2y ago

What else can I help you with?