
Could the ancient Romans have built a digital computer? - blueintegral
http://www.hscott.net/could-the-ancient-romans-have-built-a-digital-computer/
======
tolmasky
I think the point of the article was "Could Romans build a computer, if plans
were magically given to them?". Given this, the critique I am about to make is
a little outside the scope of this thought experiment. However, I've wondered
about questions like this a lot before, and I think it is also interesting to
consider that the Romans (possibly) had many conceptual hurdles to cross as
well. I am not a historian, but it seems that given their numeral system, they
would not have had a firm understanding of mathematical bases, and thus would
have not understood the importance of diodes/transistors/etc since they would
have had to make the conceptual leap of representing numbers (and all
information!) in binary (base 2). It's interesting to think about what obvious
inventions we may not realize today due to the way we represent certain forms
of information.

~~~
DanBC
I agree that Roman numerals would make computers interesting. But if we extend
the thought experiment to Greeks + Romans, could they have had some other kind
of computing?

It might not have been binary. It might not have been digital, but analogue.

I don't know anything about philosophy but Zeno's Arrow Paradox shows the
strength of analogue thinking.

> It's interesting to think about what obvious inventions we may not realize
> today due to the way we represent certain forms of information.

I've only recently learnt that in Russian there are different words for
"blue", and that these are seen as different colours, not just lighter or
darker shades of the same colour.

And while it's good that we have so much processing power it does tend to mean
that we just throw more processors at something, rather than designing a
radically new architecture for specific domains.

~~~
rational_indian
I think Greeks + Romans + Indians increases the odds significantly.

The Indians had an understanding of the required math...

1\. Binary numbers: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_number#History> 2\.
Zero: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)#India> 3\. A brief history of
Indian mathematics: <http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html>

This combined with the engineering skills of the other civilizations could
have in theory heralded the digital age a little sooner :)

~~~
TDL
I also believe there was extensive trade between Romans & Indian societies so
it is entirely feasible that some exchange could have occurred.

------
RodgerTheGreat
I think that mechanical computers are dismissed too quickly. Babbage was a
perfectionist, and his machines were crippled by the reliance on decimal
numbers. Konrad Zuse constructed his Z1[1] singlehandedly over a period of
several years, based on a binary design. While the Z1 was only Turing Complete
by technicality (it had the same instruction set as the relay-based Z3[2]) and
it was fairly unreliable, it could have been built with more primitive
technology and paved the way for significant improvements.

    
    
      [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer)
      [2] http://www.zib.de/zuse/Inhalt/Kommentare/Html/0684/universal2.html

~~~
themgt
Yeah, I think this is an interesting idea, but it sort of inverts causality in
a way. Could we have gone to the moon without a computer? To what extent are
our advances since the advent of computation a result of computation itself?

Put another way, if the Romans had invented a computer, would they have had
our level of technology maybe just 100-200 years later?

~~~
dublinben
It's likely that the greater forces responsible for the downfall of the Roman
Empire would have happened regardless of what advanced technology they might
have developed.

~~~
swombat
Actually, from what I understood from listing to a TTC lecture series about
this, the "decline and fall" of the roman empire is somewhat of a fiction, in
that it wasn't a brutal event, more of a long slow disintegration over the
span of a thousand years. To give some sense of perspective, that's 3 times
longer than the US has existed, and people have been clamouring that the US is
in decline for the last 50 years.

What happened is that regions progressively became more independent and broke
off from the central hegemony of Rome and then Byzantium. It took until the
1400s for that last official centre of Roman power to dwindle, and even
through to today, Rome has maintained a huge influence on the rest of the
world through the Roman Catholic Church.

So, rather than falling down, the Roman Empire slowly but surely transformed
into something else. Arguably, we (western civilisation) are the direct
descendants of the Greco-Roman Civilisation, and so one could make a (somewhat
strained) argument that the Roman Empire is alive and well today, just in a
different, more modern form, that has undergone 2000 years of evolution.

What to make of this myth of the downfall of the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages,
etc? Well, according to that lecture series, this was largely a myth concocted
during the Enlightenment to position it in history. The Renaissance needed to
frame itself as a major cultural change, so it helped to frame history as "the
Classical period, the Dark Ages, and now the Renaissance" - and draw on a fine
period of history to support all the new ideas and revolutions brewing (i.e.
"things were good back in Roman times, then things were really bad because of
the Church, and now things are better again because we're standing up to the
Church"). For the people living through the supposed transition between the
Classical Period and the Dark Ages, though, apparently, there was no such
stark difference.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Kind of but not entirely true - I will defer to real historians but roughly it
breaks down like this 100 - 180 AD : golden age of emperors, what we think of
when we think Rome

200-350 : serious decline and infighting, split into four regions, during this
period attempts to enforce price controls to stem inflation. Rome itself
stopped being political centre

350-400 Constantine recovery (unites to one region again - one empire of three
parts, one god of three parts, one emperor - gettit?)

400 + : total collapse of western empire - communications fail, smaller
regions contest with each other, and inflation wrecks the value of economies
as trade collapses. Eastern empire carries on with vastly reduced army and
trade links to Persia.

This really was a dark ages - impoverished, illiterate, backwards looking and
lacking trade with most of the world. There was no single definition of dark
AGRs - mostly because there are few ways to be right and many ways to be wrong
In short, the glory of empire did not last as long as everyone thinks - mostly
Rome was a trade agreement that everyone else was keeping up in lieu of
anything better.

~~~
swombat
Well, that's the thing. Yes, the central control collapsed (though I still
wouldn't underestimate the influence of the Church, which effectively
controlled kings' actions through the threat of excommunication). However, on
a local basis, there was no such great disaster, just a long slow change.

And it was not really a dark age. As I said in my previous post, the dark age
narrative is largely an invention of the 17th-18th century. What actually
happened in that period was the development of a whole lot of great stuff like
city states, art, commerce, banking, kingdoms, navigation tools (compass),
military inventions (crossbows, guns), hourglasses, farming technology
(ploughing), metallurgy, optics (eyeglasses!), mechanical clocks, textile
technology (spinning wheel), the printing press, windmills, glassmaking...

For the people living in those times, it probably didn't feel anything like a
"dark age". Just a fairly smooth progression upwards, with the usual ups and
downs of wars, plagues and other disasters that are hardly confined to the
middle ages.

I know the narrative of "here's the awesome roman empire, and now the church
takes over and you have the dark ages, and now reason comes back in the form
of the renaissance" is very compelling, particularly if you don't like the
church very much, but it is just a narrative, and is not very well supported
with facts.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Quite a lot depends on _when_ we say the dark ages began / ended. By say 1066
I would say Darkness was lifted, trading and Europe stabilised and by 1200 and
Marco Polo Western Europe became fully involved / aware of with the rest of
the Eurasia continent.

Taking 1066 as a uk centric cutoff much of the above had either not been
invented / rediscovered

Kingdoms and city states - The Roman Duc and knightly organisation of armies
appeared before 350, banking was I thought super charged by the crusades.
Compasses - Marco Polo, the Mongols, guns - not till what 1300?

I am aware there is always some in Europe knew but it did not benefit most.

So it does depend in definitions (as always). If its the simplistic Romans/bad
church/good renaissance then yes I agree with you, but if it is Good
Romans/messed up Romans/dark ages/Europe starts to join the world/renaissance
Then I am much happier to argue for a period of 400+ years where development
in Europe was largely static and the agrarian based economies just slowly
adjusted to lower levels of trade etc, and certainly 450-550 was just a morass
of backwards sliding.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I am just re-reading this and something has struck me - my posts sent by
iPhone are always less coherent and more difficult to read than those I type
at a desk.

It may be because I am more rushed on the phone, but I suspect it is a
function of how I think - I seem to think by typing and my typing speed on
Iphone is much slower than my brain can handle

~~~
cema
You think as you type? Try it the other way around.

------
eksith
They absolutely could have built a digital computer and much more. He's
slightly underestimating Roman enginuity for delicate manufacturing. Consider
for example the Cage cup[1]. It's an exquisite piece of art and creativity
and, all things cosidered, engineering as well due to the very tight
tolerences and detail.

There's a lot more to progress than just the capacity for great leaps in
engineering and sciences. Often times, there's a bit of luck and timing
(Newton's apple and, of course, Newton himself) and also a societal
willingness to promote new kinds of thinking.

The Antikythera mechanism is thought to be more a Greek invention than
Roman[2]. And I've felt the Greeks were more appreciative of experimentation
than the Romans who were driven more by the necesities of war and maintenance
of the empire and they may be better candidates (with perhaps some Roman help)
to go about making a proper computer.

We also need to understand that certain concepts in mathematics didn't exist
in Roman mathematics at the time, like Zero (before Ptolemy)[3], which in
addition to meaning "nothing" as quantity it also means "something" as a
value.

We also know the Romans traded extensively in the Middle East which means they
could have potentially been exposed to very early experiments with
electricity[4]. While the age of "Bagdad Battery" like devices are debatable,
it's not too much of a stretch to see ancient alchemists experimenting... more
than likely the Greeks.

    
    
      [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cage_cup
      [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_wreck
      [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)
      [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

~~~
elteto
> They absolutely could have built a digital computer and much more.

No, absolutely not. I think you are deluding yourself. There is a long way to
go from building a fancy vase or discovering the existence of the zero
quantity to developing the necessary mathematical, physical and chemical
framework needed to produce even the most rudimentary piece of digital
technology.

~~~
maxerickson
An abacus is essentially digital.

~~~
aleyan
Considering the abacus is finger operated, it is digital.

~~~
maxerickson
I actually meant that it is used to store discrete values.

For that matter, a pile of stones is essentially digital.

------
alan_cx
A smarty pants answer would be, yes, but it took 2000 years....

The problem with this is that you end up with lots of additions to the
premise. So, you ask the question: "Could Romans build a computer, if plans
were magically given to them?. Then, you have to say, if they had plans they
understood, then if they had plans using a certain technology, then if they
had zero, and if they had an understanding of x, then y, then z, and on it
goes. In then end, it becomes pretty clear the answer is no because of the
sheer number of caveats we have to add to make the original premise work.

The whole thing seems to be a bit of an idolisation of an ancient
civilisation. Its like we want them to have had mystical powers. Like how some
people want to connect ancient Egyptians and Mayans to aliens. This is the
fantasy of forgotten super knowledge.

Or, consider this: do we seriously that we could build something that we
designed and built 2000 years from now? Something that could reasonably
include or be based on alien technology and knowledge.

A connected tangent type thought, and I have no idea where it goes; but how
come Romans were so clever, but current tribes around the world, sort of,
aren't? How does that work? Is it a resource thing? Environment thing? Seems a
bit odd to me that even now we have societies who are actually behind a
society 2000 years old.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Arguably they were just an insight away from the hot-air baloon, so yes, I
think there ought to be something 2000 years ahead that we can build today if
we magically get the plans.

~~~
jerf
There's probably some really impressive nanotechnology we could theoretically
build today, bootstrapping off our today's tech fairly quickly, if we just
knew what we were doing. I don't mean necessarily a full-on self-replicating
machine, necessarily, but who knows, maybe even that, with the right
bootstrapping sequence. We just don't really know what we're doing today.

In A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, one of the minor points is the
bootstrapping hobby that some in the galactic civilization undertake, trying
to determine the minimal steps that could be transmitted to primitive
civilization to most rapidly bootstrap them to "real" civilization. I find
myself curious about that too, and would probably enjoy that hobby, but alas,
we lack the knowledge and perspective to properly play today.

------
rogerbinns
Why would they need to build a digital computer? How about an analog one. A
good example is Moniac <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer>

It uses water to model an economy. Taps can be used to change variables (eg
interest rates). If the Romans wanted to do engineering calculations then
there is no requirement for digital - an analog computer could do the
calculations just fine. You can imagine taps to set lengths, widths, heights
etc.

------
kamaal
The problem really is in defining a computer. The first mechanical computer
was not designed by Charles Babbage. Some thing like a clock/wrist watch is a
mechanical computer. A marine chronometer like
this(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer>) is an advanced
mechanical computer. The marine chronometer of the 17th century in our terms
was basically a GPS device of that era.

Think of it that way. How do you think future generations hundreds of years
now will look at our server farms. I bet our server farms won't even fall in
their definition of a computer(or whatever term used to define a computer at
their time).

~~~
eurleif
Turing equivalence means that computers hundreds of years from now may be
quantitatively vastly more powerful, but they still won't be capable of
computing anything that today's computers can't given sufficient time. The
same is not true of today's computers vs. special-purpose computation devices,
like chronometers.

------
abecedarius
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2670203> has good links on mechanical
computers and small CPU designs. [http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-
tol/2010-June/00...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-
tol/2010-June/000919.html) concludes "There’s a strong appeal in the idea that
universal computation has been within the grasp of human materials and
manufacturing technology since the invention of sewing in the Paleolithic; it
is only the mathematical sophistication that was absent. I don’t yet know if
it’s true."

------
willvarfar
I don't understand the focus on tolerance for gears.

Tolerance is about miniturisation and commoditisation. These are not critical-
path concerns here.

You could build a 'mill' analytical engine from very large wooden spars and
wheels and it'd still be a mechanical digital computer.

The bigger question is _WHY_ would they build one? What purpose would it
solve?

Babbage wanted to reduce error in the lookup tables used by mariners. There
wasn't a lot of other things it needed using for, and it would have been
cheaper to instead have the charts compiled three independent times and
comparing them.

What would the Romans have used a computer to compute?

~~~
emiliobumachar
Physical simulations. Computer-aided design. Finance. Bookkeeping. <half-joke>
If they also had cameras, exchanging pictures of cats <half-joke>

------
InclinedPlane
The design of the difference engine and the analytical engine were dependent
on tight tolerances in the parts, but that was a design _choice_ not a
fundamental constraint on mechanical computing devices. Indeed, look at
"experiments" such as the tinkertoy computer
([http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/TinkertoyComp...](http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cfs/472_html/Intro/TinkertoyComputer/TinkerToy.html))
for examples of other designs based on other principles. The idea that the
ancient Romans would have been incapable of building tinkertoy parts is simply
not believable.

Also, people have managed to build difference engines using legos,
meccano/erector sets. Here's a video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL_wy-
CxBP8>

------
Someone
This description does not discuss reliability. IIRC, these cat's whisker
diodes need frequent readjustment.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio#Crystal_detector> agrees with
that)

Using a single one to build a primitive radio receiver is easily doable, but
combining a couple of thousands of them to get a 4004? I doubt one could ever
get that to run for a second.

So, they would have to step up to better diodes. Of course, one can speculate
that they could have done that, and they could. In the end, it is all down to
the observation that flattery (aka imitation) is way easier than invention.

~~~
turtlepower
They could do what modern computers do and apply error correction codes. I
mean if we're already teleporting knowledge into the past we might as well go
all the way.

------
manaskarekar
The somewhat recent 'Why didn't the Romans invent the internet?'

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5078275>

------
buro9
> I don’t think the Romans could have built the analytical engine or other
> purely mechanical computer because of the tolerances required. I don’t know
> much about their manufacturing abilities, but I know they didn’t do a lot of
> it and imported most things.

But yet the greeks produced machines of incredible precision and function
circa 150 to 100 BC.

<http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/>

And whether they imported them or not, clearly the ability to manufacture to
such precision did exist.

~~~
imrehg
If only one would read the actual article...

 _> It’s hard to know how precise manufacturing techniques were back then, but
one of the best clues we have is the Antikythera mechanism. It uses hand cut
gears that are surprisingly precise, but still probably not good enough for a
mechanical computer. Small inaccuracies in the gear trains would add up, and
this is evident in the Antikythera mechanism. It would be even more pronounced
in a room sized contraption and would almost certainly prevent any useful
calculations from being performed._

------
pjmlp
Not sure about that, but it always amazes me how the advanced the Greek and
Roman societies were at the time, by the documents that reached our times.

If the fall of the empire were not to happen, who knows how advanced the
mankind could be in our times.

------
utopkara
Don't ignore the extremes. Before coming to conclusions with statements like
"Romans didn't know X", "Romans couldn't do Y", reflect on what you mean: you
are referring to the general and ignoring the rare extremes. I bet you could
find a few people in the whole empire who knew about more advanced math and
even the number zero. You could also find the best craftsmen to make intricate
gears, and forge strong magnets. Indeed, that's how things would go in the old
times. Masters would protect their secrets, and only if you had the money to
hire them, you'd get the exquisite work. That's why, sometimes the know-how
would be lost; like the examples for masterful crafts in the other posts.

In short, they didn't have the scientific and industrial revolution that we
had. In their times, the masters were able to make money out of their
knowledge and eliminate competition through secrecy. So, with enough money in
hand, you could do a lot better than what was available to an ordinary person
in the Roman times

------
coldtea
> _They even began dabbling in technology vastly ahead of their time. Hero of
> Alexandria drew up plans for a rudimentary steam engine in his Spiritalia
> seu Pneumatica._

Sorry, but Hero of Alexandria was a Greek. Not a Roman.

The Antikythera mechanism, mentioned casually in the article was Greek too.

------
geon
I think the more interesting question is, _would_ they?

Let's assume they can build the computer, including all the supporting
technologies, like electricity and precise mechanics.

What use case would they have where it would make economic sense to spend
countless man hours developing it?

Fortunately, all the component technologies are useful in themselves, so you
could start by developing them independently, just like it happened naturally.
Let's say you start with electricity. It's really useful right?

Well, without a power grid, electric engines, industry to use the engines, and
large electric power plants to supply a steady supply of electricity, it is
really much less attractive.

I'm doubting you could actually get a computer _built_ until the civilization
was ready for it, and there was a need.

~~~
cpressey
I completely agree. I'm kind of surprised more readers don't seem to have this
sort of reaction to the article.

------
keefe
interesting analysis, but I would prefer if it were pitched as - could a time
traveler to ancient rome build a computer or could you build a computer while
lost in the woods?

The article talks about the knowledge of the romans, regarding making wires
and such, but building core memory or a transistor successfully and stably
requires a very high level of knowledge of electricity, magnetism and some
important higher level abstractions for thinking about storing information.

So, I think no, to a very high degree of certainty the romans could not have
built a computer. If a society has not developed light bulb, I don't think
they understand electricity well enough for a computer.

------
junkbit
Romans didn't have a number zero.

~~~
rm999
Good point, but the question the article addresses is if they could have
physically built one, not designed one.

~~~
cpressey
I think that's why I don't find it a very interesting article. The capability
to build isn't very useful unless you have a theory that informs it.

------
mamu95
In the Doctor Who episode The Fires of Pompeii, the romans in pompeii
constructed a digital computer using blue prints given to be them by some
aliens and doctor who destroyed it.

------
tragomaskhalos
The broader question is why the technology of classical civilizations was not
far better than it actually was, given that they clearly knew many of the
basic principles - eg steam power. The traditional answer is "slavery": in
societies where copious manpower, in the form of slaves, is so cheap (not free
- you still have to feed 'em !), the incentive to productionise technology is
vastly reduced.

------
ricardobeat
I've always wondered about this. What are the chances electronic devices have
been built in the past and for some reason there are no remains, we just can't
tell them apart because we have no idea what to look for, or the materials
they were made of have completely disintegrated by now?

------
chewxy
The Baghdad Battery may have been invented back then, but there is no evidence
that it is used for anything more than electroplating in small scales.

I think this article is actually quite interesting and given a bit more, could
make for very compelling alternate history

~~~
kzrdude
I think the article is missing the process of technological development. What
kind of culture, funding, ideas needed to be in place to drive the innovation
needed?

------
asveikau
> I think if you traveled back in time to the Roman Empire and told them how
> to manufacture this stuff, you could plausibly create a very modest
> computer.

Then finally there'd be a use for the Pope's tweets in Latin.

------
jodrellblank
So what would they do with this computer? (This pre-George Boole computer, so
no Boolean algebra at the time).

Pre-Newton: rules out ballistics calculations, the favourite of early
computers.

No Enigma machine or other calculating devices, pretty much rules out
codebreaking.

No long term high capacity storage, or much in the way of large scale precise
information available to work with.

Large, expensive, only one in existance, no lights for output. Nothing it
could do that a dozen trained slaves couldn't do much quicker.

Maybe they could. Why would they?

------
cwmma
Water power, someone else may have mentioned it, but water power was already
used to power sawmills as possibly early as the 3rd century BC[1], I think a
better question then isn’t why didn't they build a computer, as much as why
didn't they use their water power to industrialise?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_watermills>

~~~
jbuzbee
One reason is slavery. You don't have as much incentive to industrialize when
labor is dirt-cheap.

------
dimitar
I think what was missing was theory - numeric systems, chemistry,
electromagnetism and other sciences.

In the Roman era science wasn't invented yet - they were excellent craftsmen
and sometimes Greeks produced excellent ideas, but there was also a lot of
really bad ones and the facilities to weed out the bad ideas (peer review and
scientific method) and propagate them (the printing press) weren't available
yet.

------
droithomme
Nice article, but I must take exception to one claim. The Antikythera
mechanism is in fact a computer, it's just not a programmable one.

------
rjwarrier
Romans building a digital computer? Seriously?? almost all of their so called
achievements were actually stolen frm the East (India). 2500years ago India
had two biggest universities in Nalanda and Thakshashila which encouraged
scientific thinking. and you are talking about a barbaric civilization that
was good at war and killing? pathetic...

------
dmbaggett
For extra credit, figure out the surprising thing we can build now that won't
otherwise be built until the year 3000.

------
cell303
Another way to read this article would be as follows: There has to be
something _big_ out there ready for _us_ to build.

Now consider (just consider) that one does not necessarily need a "plan" or a
"theory" to build things, one should definitely do so, preferably something
(seemingly) useless.

~~~
cpressey
I build _little_ things without a plan or theory (or at least, without a
coherent one) fairly regularly, to see what I can learn from them (and because
it's fun.)

But building something _big_? Without a plan or theory, it's hard to justify
the time and cost of doing that.

(Kind of reminds me of the film _Contact_ : the engineers just kind of built a
machine from the plans that the aliens sent, without seeming to do any
research at all into what the purpose or theory of operation of it was. My
reaction to that was complete incredulity.)

------
wslh
The article is mainly a good reminder of how many things you can do yourself.
The a posteriori reasoning without concrete proofs is faulty in the sense that
the same reasoning can be applied to a lot of things beyond the romans: could
the ancient greeks have discovered penicillin?

------
redwood
I like this because it's interesting to think about what _we_ can build today
with existing technologies that future civilizations will look back at in the
same way we have done here! It's inspiring, all the potential around us that
we cannot see.

------
zafka
I like to consider if I could build a computer if I was transported back to
Ancient times. Having a fair amount of knowledge, it would still be an immense
challenge to start from scratch and build up the tools and chemicals one
needed.

------
free652
How about a water computer?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_integrator>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer>

------
nathell
If they could, they would program in Lingua::Romana::Perligata.

[http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata....](http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata.html)

------
hakaaaaak
The Romans did something more masterful than building a computer. They built
an empire with a system of roads, etc. without which, the Europe and the U.S.
probably wouldn't exist today. But the incompetence of their emperors and the
selfishness of their people eventually led to their demise. (They should have
been friends with the huns, or have been able to adequates protect themselves.

Sure they could have built a computer if they had learned the technology. We
are still amazed now as we learn of methods and technologies that human
cultures had before us. Humans are much more able than we give them credit,
and much more innovative than history endures and relates the resulting
inventions.

------
comex
This would be fun inserted into Rome, Sweet Rome:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Sweet_Rome>

------
baddox
> While [the difference engine is] a beautiful piece of engineering, it’s
> actually not a computer.

What exactly is the distinction the author is making here?

------
jostmey
Uh, in hindsight is so simple! Duh! Those lazy Romans.

------
caycep
According to my Civ 5 game they could.

------
jacques_chester
I'm going to do my usual OT hijacking and mention the upcoming novel of a
friend. Her premise was: how would an industrialised, polytheistic society
cope with monotheistic terrorism?

It's an alternate history; the point of departure being that Archimedes of
Syracuse was captured, taken to Rome and then funded (because the Romans were
nothing if not practical). In her setting, the Romans are well into an
industrial revolution.

The blurb she wrote for an agent:

    
    
        Pontius Pilate is a successful corporate lawyer 
        headhunted by the Roman Senate to run a difficult 
        province in need of a gentler, civilian touch. He’s 
        been in the job five years — and is starting to get 
        the hang of it — when the Yeshua Ben Yusuf file 
        lands on his desk. This is not ideal right now. 
        Judaea is in the midst of a major terrorism crisis, 
        his wife keeps threatening to go back to Caesarea (
        she can’t stand Jerusalem), his son is becoming far 
        too friendly with the High Priest’s son, and his 
        boss keeps forgetting that he isn’t actually in the 
        army. Even worse, his closest friend and greatest 
        rival from law school is Ben Yusuf’s lawyer. A 
        Jerusalem courtroom is the setting for the first 
        clash of civilisations, where people from a 
        fundamentally different tradition are forced to 
        engage with religious ideas that in many respects 
        they do not want to understand.
    
        What is most distinctive about the book is my 
        imagining of what a technologically advanced pagan 
        civilisation would look like. That is, what if the 
        Romans won much of their empire under conditions 
        that we associate with the Industrial Revolution? 
        What if — with their distinctive, non-Christian 
        moral values — they were gifted with all that 
        immense fire-power and confronted with monotheistic 
        terrorists?
        
        I do not think the Romans were secular in the 
        modern sense, and I haven’t portrayed them as such. 
        They were, however, very different from the 
        monotheistic peoples they confronted in Judaea. My 
        Roman characters are still religious, but 
        differently religious. Unlike many authors of a 
        skeptical bent, I do not seek to score cheap shots 
        by denigrating religion per se. Rather, Bring Laws 
        & Gods recognises the persistent vitality of 
        religious traditions, especially when their 
        practitioners are confronted with overwhelming 
        military power and physical occupation by non-
        believers.
    

It should be published this year and I am very much looking forward to reading
it, based on the introduction and samples she's dropped:

[http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/09/22/the-past-is-a-
foreign...](http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/09/22/the-past-is-a-foreign-
country/)

[http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/09/24/the-angel-bring-
laws-...](http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/09/24/the-angel-bring-laws-and-
gods-outtake-1/) (NSFW)

[http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/10/15/the-visit-bring-
laws-...](http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/10/15/the-visit-bring-laws-and-
gods-outtake-2/)

<http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2010/11/25/patria-patria/> (NSFW)

~~~
curt
At the end of the Western Roman Empire in 300AD they became monotheistic. The
interesting piece is, what if they had been able to eliminate all the civil
wars? In that case their would have been a unified force to resist the rise
and spread of Islam. Islam filled a void left by the collapse of the Roman
Empire even though the Western Empire still existed.

~~~
yareally
I'm not sure that would have helped that much really. The Eastern Empire had
been propping up the West for years with trade and money. By splitting off,
the East was able to keep all that funding for itself. However,
internal/external struggles, the Forth Crusade[1] and political intrigue ended
up being the downfalls. I do think there is some "what if?" factor in all
that. Such as what if the unified empire had not wasted all those resources on
the civil wars.

In some ways, the Western Empire was sort of doomed from the time of Augustus
onward when their embedded fear of the German tribes was established[0]. The
defeat at Teutoburg Forest and the loss of around 20,000 Roman legionaries
stopped all expansion into Germany and most likely lead the the eventual
confrontation with the Goths. There's also a "what if" due to the Huns and
pushing the Goths across the Danube, but if it were not the Huns, it could
have been other factors as well (famines or another barbarian tribe).

The Eastern Empire almost reconquered the Western half in the 6th century
under Justinian[2] and Belisarius[3]. However, internal bickering and mistrust
led to squandering much of the gains that were won.

The Islamic forces were also able to capitalize on the chaos brought on by the
perpetual wars between the Eastern Empire and the Sassanids[4] as well as the
various barbarian tribes (such as the Bulgars and the various Gothic tribes
that filled the vacuum of the former Western Empire) that still preyed on the
Constantinople and other areas. There was just too many fires to contain them
all at once and when one was put out, another was started in another region.

Honestly, I think it was for the best the Roman Empire ended for the sake of
renewal (as much as I love Roman History). It had started to stagnate by the
forth century and the more Greek side in the Eastern Empire was far from being
the intellectual and cultural epicenter that it was during Classical Greek
times. Sure, they built great things such as the Hippodrome and the Hagia
Sofia, but those were just reincarnations of similar things done under the
unified empire.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justinian>

[4] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanid_Empire>

~~~
jacques_chester
One thing that's a bit confusing about "The Roman Empire" is that it
bifurcates into the Western and Eastern empires, which were two wildly
different polities with a shared name.

If you thought the gcc/egcs fork was a big deal ...

~~~
yareally
Yeah, very true. The Germanic Tribes were probably as much, if not more Roman
by the 6th Century than the Eastern Empire (Byzantines) were. From my
understanding, the Germanic tribes did not exactly want to destroy the empire,
they just wanted to be a part of the Roman Empire and share in its protection
--to be Roman and share in their luxuries and technology. However, the Romans
were too distrusting of them and treated them as second or third class
citizens and isolating them on worthless lands far away from the core
empire[1]. It was also business as usual for the Romans and how they treated
many of the civilizations they saw as inferior--sucker them out of whatever
you can and assume they're too dumb to know. They even traded the Goths dog
meat in return for their children[1]. However, the Germans were smarter than
the Romans gave them credit for and realized what was going on. When the
Germanic tribes saw how weak the Romans were and after years of mistreatment,
they decided they had enough.

Byzantines with a more Greek Culture (and spoken language) and different
religious practices in some ways, despite being part of the same Catholic
Church. I'd imagine that many in the West by the time of Justinian viewed them
as invaders as much as any of the other groups.

Mistrust of foreign cultures still plagues us today in most countries
throughout the world. It's too bad we do not learn from the mistakes of the
past, such as those of the Romans and Gothic tribes. Isolating your fellow man
because he speaks a different language or has a different culture/religion
ends up making a country less safe instead of more safe.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_War_(376-382)#Outbreak>

------
vivekv
What about electricity to use these things :) ? A schottky diode works on
electricity...

~~~
maximem
"My main concern is powering the device, I still don’t know if that would work
well enough." ;)

------
lukevdp
tldr: maybe, with a big if around powering it

------
Daniel_Newby
You do not need powerful magnets to make a generator. You use whatever
permanent magnet you have and put an electromagnet in parallel with it. When
it starts turning, the output power from the permanent magnet can be fed to
the electromagnet and the generator pulls itself up by its own bootstraps.

------
largesse
I think the bigger question is: could they want to?

------
martinced
Yes, but it wouldn't have been able to run Ruby ; )

 _(smile, it's funny)_

------
codeka
This seems like a classic example of Betteridge's law of headlines...

~~~
daeken
Every time someone references Betteridge's 'law' of headlines, god kills a
kitten.

Seriously, read the article. It's a tremendously interesting look at a
hypothetical world in which the Romans decided to build a digital computer,
and how they could've gone about it using the technology available to them. It
doesn't need an answer.

~~~
DanBC
Thank you.

The other projects on his page are also fascinating.

