@Tryptameanie 574537 wrote:
Oh absolutely, weren’t we all better off when the abacus was the height of technology?
@Digital Buddha 574540 wrote:
probably, thing still works. run out of batteries and the calculator is just a brick
@Tryptameanie 574541 wrote:
Good point
I read this book where this US computer dude who is into astronomy went to China in the 80s and the prof was doing a FFT (fast fourier transform) with handwritten notes and rows abacuses. So he hacked together some FFT code on his 1980s computer and showed it to the prof; who was impressed that you could get the graphical data within a few minutes; and said it was “not bad” – but the US dudes data had bad errors in some dynasty!
The prof explained that inthose years they all had a big war so the ancient scholars who would look at the stars had to go into hiding (as big observatory towers are targets) and didn’t get as much data for that series; so he had to do two FFTs and correct for the human error; and using the abacuses made him think more closely when dealing with that data..
I hardly know what a FFT does anyway other than its useful and does things you would need analogue kit to do…
