The Romans were doubtlessly master engineers . They were experts at polite engineering , build roads , meliorate sanitation , excogitate Roman concrete , and fabricate aqueduct that adhere to tolerance telling even by today ’s standards . Perhaps the best evidence of their aptitude is the fact that many of those structure still stand today , almost 2000 yr later . They even began dabbling in engineering science immensely forward of their time . Hero of Alexandria drew up plans for a underlying steam engine in his Spiritalia seu Pneumatica . He called it the aeolipile .
It did n’t work out very well . However , by the previous 3rd 100 advertizement , all essential parts for constructing a steam engine were known to Romanic technologist : Hero ’s steam power , the chalk and link up pole chemical mechanism ( in theHierapolis sawmill ) , the piston chamber and plunger ( in metal strength pump ) , non - return valve ( in water pumps ) and pitch ( in water mills ) .
That receive me thinking : Could the Romans have built a digital information processing system using only the technology and fabrication processes available to them ?
The Roman Empire did incredible thing with the comparatively limited cognition and resources at their disposal . Hunter Scott , however , looks one step fartherthan the Romans could have ever stargaze .
Maybe the first thing you would think of is a mechanical computer , like the Babbage Difference Engine :
While it ’s a beautiful piece of engineering , it ’s actually not a estimator . It ’s a calculator . Charles Babbage did design a mechanical computer , call the analytical engine . It ’s never been built , because it would take up an entire way and be extremely expensive . I do n’t think the Romans could have build up the analytic engine or other purely mechanically skillful computer because of the tolerances required . I do n’t have a go at it much about their manufacturing abilities , but I hump they did n’t do a hatful of it and imported most things . I could n’t find the tolerances needed for the Harvard Mark I , an electromechanical computer , but I ’m hesitant to believe that they could have build that either . It ’s hard to experience how precise fabrication techniques were back then , but one of the in force clues we have is the Antikythera chemical mechanism . It apply handwriting cut gears that are surprisingly precise , but still probably not good enough for a mechanical computer . Small inaccuracies in the geared wheel trains would add up up , and this is plain in the Antikythera mechanics . It would be even more marked in a way size gadget and would almost certainly prevent any utilitarian calculation from being performed .
If the Romans could n’t do it mechanically , they would have postulate a semiconductor unit . When most mass reckon of semiconductor , they reckon of clean rooms and million of dollars of machinery . However , that kind of equipment is only needed for high performance semiconductors used in modern integrate circuit with high speed , high efficiency switch . It turns out that naturally occurring semiconductors are actually quite common . mineral like zincite , bornite , and carborundum will work . However , the just mineral to use is lead sulphide , AKA galena . It be used without any limiting direct after minelaying . It ’s got a ring gap of about 0.4 eV. Ancient societies know all about galena , and the Egyptians used it as physical composition .
They could have easy made a CT ’s whisker diode by using a lowly objet d’art of live conducting wire to touch a head on the galena crystal , make a crude and mentally ill metallic element - semiconductor junction called a Schottky barrier diode . Current will flow from the metal into the galena , but not the other way around . This is the same technique that was used in early crystallization radio pass receiver . POWs in World War II used the oxidization on razer blades as a semiconductor and a safety pin to produce a diode so they could build pass catcher to keep up to date with word on the war . It took a fortune of patience to find a stark spot on the blade that would lick , and too it would take time to poke the galena with the conducting wire in different spots to find a place that would act as a crystal rectifier .
If they could have built a diode , could they have built a transistor ? The first transistor that Bell Labs work up ( although not the first transistor ever built ) was stop contact and look jolly similar to the cat ’s whisker rectifying tube .
Instead of a single full point , they had two , each formed by the tangency of the edge of a while of gold foil onto a lump of Germanium . A simpler variant of this can be done by fundamentally building a computerized axial tomography ’s whisker junction rectifier but using two springy wire bear upon two dissimilar spots on the galena . So could n’t the Romans have just modify their diodes to make transistors ? In my opinion , no . When Bell Labs was experimenting with electronic transistor , they tried do a galena cat ’s vibrissa version and ran into some problems . To being “ transisting ” , the whisker tips had to be closer than 0.1 mm . They also found that you had to use freshly cleaved galena airfoil and any humidity would intervene . They had to make extremely crisp hair by dissolving the goal with electrolysis . Now , I do n’t want to undervalue the Romans . Maybe they could have trained workers to be that precise or occur up with some other manner of solving the job . But we ’re going to take it tardily on them because there ’s a better means to get around the trouble of no electronic transistor .
The Romans jazz how to make wire and also have it away how to work iron . So now the question is , can you build a computer using only diodes , wire , and iron ? Well , prior to 1953 , no computers used transistors . The Romans love how to work glass , but it ’s unlikely they could have invent vacuum tubes . While a lot of former computers did use vacuum tubes , they often also relied ondiode logical system . There are two major problems you have to solve with diode logic . First , diodes have a voltage drop across them , which means you need to inflate the signal every so often . Early designers solved this problem using electronic transistor as amplifiers . The 2nd problem is that you ca n’t design a NOT logic gate ( an inverter ) using only diodes . Designers got around this job also by using transistors ( or vacuum tubes ) . So how could the Romans have done it without transistors ? Well , you could ramp up an inverter using a transformer by plainly flipping the secondary turnout wires around . A transformer is just a square atomic number 26 hoop with wire wrapped around each side . You have to use distinct pulses rather than uninterrupted logical system level , but that ’s how everyone did it in the 40′s and 50′s . To address the amplification problem , you could use a relay . you’re able to make a electrical relay using only iron and telegram , but they ’re often little , intricate machine and they have move parts . I think if they recruit Roman jewelry makers and scale the sizing so it was reasonable to work with , they could have produced relay . There are some really impressive pieces of papistical jewellery that have been found . The image is too large to embed here , but take a look at the range of mountains onthis piece .
They also would have take to make memory , a direction to bear on the body politic of the machine . The obvious prospect here iscore computer memory . Most core memory was made using ferrite , but regular iron can be used . I wo n’t go into contingent here on how core retentiveness works because Wikipedia has a good article on it . If you ’re not intimate , I urge chequer it out . It ’s a really bang-up idea . accidentally , you may also make system of logic using ferrite cores , like theElliot 803did , so that could be useful for supplementing ( or even supplant ) diode system of logic .
The last , and perhaps most authoritative thing you need for a computer is electrical energy ! We know that theBaghdad Batteryexisted back then , but it ’s extremely unlikely that a plausibly with child array of them could power this hypothetical Roman computer . Instead , they would have had to utilise a generator . This is belike the most unmanageable part of this hypothetic computer . To bend a pee wheel into a author , they could have used a configuration like this :
But you need a attracter for that . Basically the only magnet they would have had access to is Lodestone . There are a couple of ways they could have made a good magnet . From Wikipedia :
Heating the [ smoothing iron ] above itsCurie temperature , allowing it to cool down in a magnetised field and forge it as it cools . This is the most effective method and is similar to the industrial cognitive operation used to create permanent magnets .
Placing the detail in an external magnetic field of operation will result in the item continue some of the magnetism on removal . Vibration has been bear witness to increase the effect . Ferrous materials aligned with the Earth ’s magnetic field that are capable to vibration ( for example , frame of a conveyor ) have been shown to acquire significant residual magnetism .
Stroking : An existing magnet is moved from one destruction of the item to the other repeatedly in the same direction .
By iterating the process several times to make in turn strong attractive feature , the Romans could in all likelihood have made some magnets practiced enough for a author .
It ’s important to note that I ’m not a historian , I ’m a computer engineer ( who was trained using innovative techniques , at that ) . So this is all speculation . I think if you traveled back in time to the Roman Empire and separate them how to cook up this stuff , you could plausibly create a very pocket-size calculator . My independent concern is powering the twist , I still do n’t know if that would form well enough . But there ’s only one way to recover out : experimentation …
Are you an expert at Roman history or the kind of engineer who remembers using a hydrargyrum delay communication channel ? I ’d hump to find out about other put-on they could have used !
Image : Shutterstock / David Carillet
Hunter Scottis a Computer Engineering undergrad student at Georgia Tech . He has worked at theArbutus Centerfor Distributed Engineering Education at GT in theVertically Integrated Projectsprogram , and latterly won first place in the Embedded Systems catagory in a Cisco design competition .
Ancient romeComputersHistory
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