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#1 |
Join Date: Sep 2011
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I read the RPG scenario "World War 2.1" in GURPS:WEIRD WAR II. I thought, what if it was the United States started computing technology in 1933 instead of Nazi Germany? In this reality seed, it starts with Robert Goddard inventing the point-contact transistor and continues with the newly-elected president FDR bringing together all the inventors of digital computing: Howard Aiken, John Atanasoff, Clifford Berry, John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, etc., and to lead this group, none other than John von Neumann? I wonder what Ken Hite, Mike Schiffer, Craig Neumeier, and Bill Stoddard would say the result of the change would be?
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#2 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Doesn't quite work. Most of those people were too young and undistinguished in 1933 to get recruited into such an effort. The Weird War II scenario is a lot more plausible, since Hollerith machines were an established technology in the thirties. You can get the Hollerith-based scenario started in in the USA - it was an American technology - by having FDR's administration wanting more efficient management of the New Deal programmes, and IBM deciding to speed them up via electronics. Claude Shannon's master's thesis in 1937 provides a suitable starting point.
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#3 | |
Join Date: Sep 2011
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![]() Quote:
Last edited by bigmanhelper; 09-12-2011 at 12:53 PM. |
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Tags |
weird war ii, world war ii |
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