Template talk:Early computer characteristics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 Colossus: binary? 2 Digital column 3 Nation 4 Should Stibitz's Complex Number Calculator be added?

[edit] Colossus: binary?

Nice table, but I think we can assert that Colossus was "binary". It used decimal counters, but most of the processing occurred on binary streams 5 bits wide. An operator could wire up AND, OR and XOR functions in any combination. — Matt Crypto 09:09, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Digital column

Is this column even necessary? The title of the table already indicates that all these computers are digital. I don't think it's necessary to reiterate that point. -- mattb @ 2006-11-11T06:15Z

I went ahead and removed it per my reasoning above. -- mattb @ 2006-11-11T19:48Z

[edit] Nation

What's the general view about the need for a "nation" column? It isn't really a "defining characteristic", as the table's heading suggests it should be. I also feel it may detract a little from the impression of an article that aims to present an impartial account of the development of computers. It's interesting, of course, from the point of view of nationalistic sentiment. But people can find out where the computers were developed by clicking on the links, without the need to emphasize this by putting it in a table about computing characteristics of the machines. What does anyone else think? Adrian Robson 22:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I don't think there's any particularly good reason to leave this information in the table. -- mattb @ 2006-12-14T20:14Z

Thanks. As there have been no other comments over the past month, I've removed the nation column. Adrian Robson 08:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to have reappeared with no discussion! Pterre (talk) 14:18, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Should Stibitz's Complex Number Calculator be added?

In the article on Stibitz it says he was "the father of the modern digital computer". I think that sentence should be modified anyway, but it still might be worthwhile to add the "Model K" or the "Complex Number Calculator" to the template. Christian Storm 14:22, 8 June 2007 (UTC)