Best leader for ALL the civs?

[~Vodka~]

Ever notice how easy it is to (hate to use an old phrase) "get your goat" ?

You guys will jump on anything like its foreign policy.

"Lighten up man..."

-Chong, 'Up In Smoke'

[Dauphin]

Simple things please simple minds

You asked a question, we answered.

[KrazyHorse]

Konrad Zuse builds the Z3 computer in Germany, the first calculating machine with automatic control of its operations

(From the link)



I'd never heard of this before...

Unfortunately, it's not an electronic computer. It's electromechanical, as information was stored and processed mechanically in banks of relays that were flipped through electrical impulses.

The Z2 and Z3 computers were electromechanical relay machines and the Z3, completed in 1941, had an electromechanical memory composed of relays as well as an electromechanical arithmetical unit

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Zuse.html

[Harovan]

Weird question with no banana option to bail out --> voted for option #4

[dunk]

I was duped into reading this thread. I thought it would be a vote about which leader in the game was the best choice.

Now, I see it is just dumb.

Will Millard Fillmore be a choice for leader?

Jacka$$.

[KrazyHorse]

Oh, and by the way

Ever notice how easy it is to (hate to use an old phrase) "get your goat" ?

I think the fact that you announced your intentions in your first post sort of destroyed this troll. You should take some hints from the trolls in the OT; they can get people to flame away without realising it's a setup.

[Jaguar]

And people wonder why they hate us...

[Jaguar]

dp

[lorddread]

Re: Congratulations!

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Stupidest idea yet. Plus, the British invented the computer.

Actually the first computer WAS invented by an American.

The first "computerized" manufacturing device (a punch card loom) was invented by monks in the 15th century.

[KrazyHorse]

Actually the first computer WAS invented by an American

Which computer?

EDIT: again, electronic computer. Mechanical computers can be regarded as anything stretching back to the abacus.

[siredgar]

Can we see some pictures of these computers and a list of functions, so we may judge whether or not they are "computers"?

[KrazyHorse]

Colossus was a fully programmable and electronic computer (processing and memory) with mechanical input/output built to do pattern-matching in Enigma-encoded messages. Its base components were standard vacuum tubes, of which it contained 1500. I earlier stated that it had been constructed in 1943. It appears I was wrong, and the first one was completed in 1944. At the end of the war all 3 Colossus machines were dismantled and most technical documents relating to it were destroyed. ENIAC was built along the same basic lines in 1946

[Ecthy]

Oh damn, and for a moment I thought we had been first at something. So Colossus surely didn't have any transistors (too early), so what's the difference to the Zx machines by Zuse?

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
Oh damn, and for a moment I thought we had been first at something. So Colossus surely didn't have any transistors (too early), so what's the difference to the Zx machines by Zuse?

You don't need transistors. Transistors are voltage-controlled current sources and so are vacuum tubes. Transistors are just a millionth the size and based around different physical principles. The difference between a fully electronic computer like Colossus and an electromechanical computer like Z3 is not all that great, but there is additional flexibility and speed provided, in addition to the conceptual importance of not relying on the physical positions of switches/relays for storage and processing. In the end they both can be fully programmable, but one of them hearkens back to Babbage's difference engines and the other one seems more modern and provided a blueprint for development.

[Ecthy]

I see, so while Zuse's engines were the max of what you could do with the old stuff, the Colossus was some kind of fundament for future development?

I find it's worth a laugh how all the intellectual threads have moved from OT to Civ3 in the past 2 years.