A random thought

[forsyth]

I can't help but wonder if, all else aside, the reason computers were invented and took off in the "West" first is the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are a lot easier to have a computer display than Arabic or Chinese or Japanese or similar languages.

Comments

[frustratedpilot]

Well, for a couple decades there were no screens or displays on computers in the way we know them today. ENIAC only had banks of little lightbulbs. UNIVAC didn't have a screen either. Visual output came along only in the later 1950s or early 1960s.

Besides, the Japanese could have invented their own computers if they applied existing technology in the right direction. After all, they developed the Ultra cypher machine in World War Two, and that was a magnitude of sophistication above the Enigma system the Germans had. Computer technology was basically a spin-off of systems developed for radio and telephone hardware...the vacuum tube and the transistor in particular. Had the transistor been available BEFORE WW2, and had the Axis powers come up with the tech first, it could have been even more of a difference in the war effort than the A-Bomb.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

True enough, and I should know the history of computers well enough to figure it, but still. I think it (and the immense poverty of much of the mideast) help explain why computers took off here first.

On further consideration, I'd say it's mostly the poverty.

I bet it definitely helped the "West" invent the printing press first. Only 52 letters, plus puncuation to make, rather than four forms for each letter.

[frustratedpilot]

Actually, as I recall the Koreans or the Chinese invented the printing press...centuries before Gutenberg. Just that there was so little contact between East and West in those times, and the technology wasn't exploited by the Asians the way that the Europeans had later on.