Veritasium: Light bulbs are linked to the invention of computer

Babbage's machine is a programmable one of digital mechanical form. Modern is being used to distinguish electrical ones.

> You can build a mechanical, digital computer from many systems like pneumatics for example.

This is mentioned in the video (kinda), in that the video talks about Stibitz’ Model K, an electromechanical digital adder using relays, followed by various systems culminating in the programmable general-purpose Model V.

As the video then explains, ignoring nuisance (noise and vibrations) the problems of mechanical computers are signal propagation, and wear / reliability, they’re awful even compared to vacuum tubes.

Analog computers still exist but they are neither general-purpose nor easily programmable. Their big strength is solving differential equations, which they do better than digital computers in some cases.

General-purpose reprogrammability is the key advance of modern computers. Although it can be argued that Babbage and Lovelace had this idea in mind, they never built a complete working model.

The video demonstrates relay-based computers about halfway (starting at 8:00)

Almost as bad as a room full of Selectric typewriters.

Check out this series for building a relay computer, the sound is glorious:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5-_rpS40owFzVVuxDF70Tw/vid...

Without transistors it can be hard to imagine the heights vacuum tube technology would reach.