Comment by b33j0r
6 hours ago
I think you are implicitly invoking Turing completeness as opposed to “fixed-step recipes on a punchcard” as your requirement for something to be considered computing.
If a loom had a jump instruction, would you change your mind? (They did not.)
And yet we still have IDE defaults of 80 characters because of FORTRAN punchcards. That’s the heritage being invoked.
EDIT: I think all of these early devices also helped us to understand how to build multiplexers, which are the basic building block of any CPU. Given this instruction, I do a different thing.
Yes, my main confusion is — what did the Jacquard loom do that all the prior art did not. I'm looking at it, at many much older devices, and am led to conclude it is only because of popularity.