What’s a Human-Powered Computer? (2020)

We used to call them 'Adding Machines' - http://www.vintagecalculators.com/assets/images/Burroughs_1....

They were gradually phased out when (very expensive!) digital hand-held calculators came on to the market in the early 1970s.

* Expensive as in a simple 4-function digital calculator was priced at more than half the average person's weekly salary. 10-15 years later, similar-capability solar-powered calculators were being given away as promotional materials.

And let's not forget that "computer" used to be a job title, not the name of a machine.

In the book 3 body problem, they had a game where they used many humans to emulate a transistor and made calculations.

Yes. Qin Shi Huang commanding the human computer made by very large population is, I think, a satire on the obsession of dictatorship country with large-scale population performances (which always happens in China and North Korea), but that's really a very imaginative and mind-blowing scene.

https://archive.is/U2JVr