Roman Computers?

[cmacq]

What did a Roman computer look like? Ex-artillerymen need not reply.

[cmacq]

OK, I should have said 'lap top,' so we'll just cut to the chase...



See...
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus...nd-abacus.html

[Sakkura]

Well, the Romans didn't invent the abacus. They just put it to good use with their usual sense for practicality.

[Long lost Caesar]

did rome actually invent ANYTHING?! i swear all they did was take other technology and make it better, and by all means thats a great achievement, but from what i know i wouldnt give rome any points for creativity.

[antisocialmunky]

They commisioned Archimedes for a odometer to measure the distance their roades went.

[Rodion Romanovich]

OK, I should have said 'lap top,' so we'll just cut to the chase...



See...
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus...nd-abacus.html

*shudders* I can't imagine how slow EB would run on that

[TWFanatic]

*shudders* I can't imagine how slow EB would run on that

[Sakkura]

did rome actually invent ANYTHING?! i swear all they did was take other technology and make it better, and by all means thats a great achievement, but from what i know i wouldnt give rome any points for creativity.

They built the foundation for modern law and administration, and invented concrete. Other than that they mostly just took other people's inventions and put them to use 37 million times more effectively.

[Danest]

That website is implying all kinds of things, such as that the Romans did invent the abacus, and did have all kinds of mathematical things that I thought they didn't have. So I'm suspicious and cautious, until I see this information elsewhere as well.

[Tellos Athenaios]

IIRC the abacus as we know it was a Chinese thing?

Anywho: it would not really have worked very well with the Roman/Latin numeral system; theirs' is one of the worst imaginable. Mostly because they rely on elementary math to denote elements of the outcome of elementary math.

I'd take the Fibonnaci numeral system, or the binary one over the Roman one any day.

(Incidentally if you were interested: the binary system is exceedingly useful to solve problems of the kind known as 'The Josephus Problem' - basically it boils down to simple binary shifts.)

[Sakkura]

IIRC the abacus as we know it was a Chinese thing?

Anywho: it would not really have worked very well with the Roman/Latin numeral system; theirs' is one of the worst imaginable. Mostly because they rely on elementary math to denote elements of the outcome of elementary math.

The abacus was and is used in many cultures, but was invented before the Chinese. The Chinese and Japanese each developed their special versions, which are still known today. In the west, the abacus eventually fell more or less out of use, but is still used in schools/pre-schools. Later, the slide rule was developed, which is a better mechanical calculator than the abacus, but without the memory. (I guess that means higher clock frequency but lower RAM? )

Apparently, the Romans didn't like using their numerals for calculations, just for representing results.

[cmacq]

Please see...

Menninger, Karl, 1992
Number Words and Number Symbols: A Cultural History of Numbers, German to English translation, M.I.T., 1969, Dover Publications.

http://books.google.com/books?id=YLJ...mbnail#PPA3,M1

This wiki page also appears to be fairly correct and may help to explain a little more?





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_abacus

And...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus#Babylonian_abacus

[pezhetairoi]

Are those beads detachable, I wonder?

[CaesarAugustus]

Do those things get internet access? My legionaries on the Rhine could really use some good old-fashioned porn to keep their morale up...

[Sakkura]

Do those things get internet access? My legionaries on the Rhine could really use some good old-fashioned porn to keep their morale up...

Yeah, but you're usually stuck with a 14.4 kbps (kilobeads per second) connection.

[pezhetairoi]

At least at that speed you don't really get lagtime. And it would be easy to ping, just hurl a bead and make sure it zings off your mate's helmet.

[Puupertti Ruma]

Yeah, but you're usually stuck with a 14.4 kbps (kilobeads per second) connection.

I'dd think thats more like kilo beads per season

[blank]

What kind of graphics card does it have? How many cores in the processor?

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
It's onboard.
.

[antisocialmunky]

What kind of graphics card does it have? How many cores in the processor?

Looks like it has 8 Cores with 3 Ram Dimms.

[Disciple of Tacitus]

Hey! That thing looks amazingly like MY video card.



Maybe it's time to upgrade.