What is a Computer?

Perhaps it might have been possible for the modern electronic computer to evolve from any number of different origins. But as it stands, the computer was born of a very specific human desire: namely, the desire to mechanize arithmetic—that is, to get a machine to do arithmetic so humans would not have to.

It may surprise you to learn that the English word computer has been in use since the 1600s. However, if you looked up the word computer in any dictionary published in the three hundred years prior to World War II, you would find that the word referred to a human being, a person who did arithmetic computations. Thus, "computer" was an occupation, in the same sense as "butcher," "baker," and "candlestick maker."

Did the word computer carry the same allure of today's "high tech" occupations? Hardly. This kind of work was sheer drudgery: sitting hour after hour, performing calculations by hand and recording them in books in the form of calculation tables. In France after the French Revolution, the decision was made to convert to a decimal monetary system, and a whole host of computations were required. Who got stuck with this horrible work? For starters, many out-of-work barbers who had lost their pre-War aristocratic clientele (some, to the guillotine!) were employed in this endeavor. Being a computer was not a glamorous position. It was horrible work. Although I cannot verify it, I must believe that just as we now say, "Hey, it beats flipping burgers!" when we are employed in less-than-desirable work, people of the 17th and 18th centuries must have uttered from time to time, "Hey, it could be worse: I could be working as a computer!"