Questions tagged [computers]

For question related to computers (including both analog and digital and both mechanical and electronic), calculators and any machines used for computation.

31 questions
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What was worldwide supply of disk storage in 1969?

I'd prefer a year-by-year graph, something like (not necessarily the "demand", just "supply")...     https://www.statista.com/statistics/751749/worldwide-data-storage-capacity-and-demand/ Google found me that, which goes back to 2009, but I…
John Forkosh
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Is it true that Stephen Hawking got the computer with his wheelchair by coincidence?

In the recent movie about Stephen Hawking it is displayed that it is a coincidence that he got a computer with his wheelchair: Some friend was a computer engineer and installed the computer for him. Is that more like a fact or just fiction? I think…
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Overflow behavior in turn counters of Odhner-style arithmometers

I have a Felix M Arithmometer (shown below) that appears to follow the same design as an Odhner arithmometer. One thing I noticed about the device is that the turn counter (on the left) does not overflow like the addition register does. This means…
Greg Nisbet
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Earliest concrete example of a binary / digital computing device

I am trying to trace (as far as known) the first example of a digital computing device. I am discounting (no pun) an abacus because I regard that as a device for representing, storing and manipulating discrete, not binary digital, data values. I…
Clive Long
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Before the Colossus and the ENIAC, did ever an electronic calculator exist?

I've done some searching on the internet, and I found that an electronic analog computer was built in 1942 in Germany, during World War II. But, before the first electronic computer, weren't there electronic calculators, which are simpler machines?…
ilich qynn
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How did Mathew Bevan acquire hacking skill without belonging to military or national agencies?

This my post may be inappropriate since math may be irrelevant in this topic. I've read this article of wikipedia of the hacker called Mathew Bevan. Seemingly the ariticle has not specified how Bevan acquired the skills of hacking which led him to…