One common complaint about computers is that they’re too hard to understand. Check out this lamentation related to the British East India Company:
The Controller and the Computer of the Duties on unrated India Goods attend the Sales of the East India Company, and take an Account of the Goods sold, and the Price; this Account is agreed with the Company, then the Controller and Computer cast the Duties, and the Receiver enters them upon the Warrant. The Computation is become so difficult, from the Number of Branches of Duties, and from the various Rules now necessarily made use of in casting them, that very few Persons can be found capable of transacting this Business, or of acquiring the Means of doing it. The Examination of Mr. William Richardson; taken upon Oath, the 3d of December 1784
Journals of the House of Commons (1785)
Wait, what? In 1785, no British civil servant was pulling up Excel to do the books on colonialism (citation needed). Even Charles Babbage was still a twinkle in his parents’ eyes.
In the quoted passage, the Computer is a human. You used to be able to be a professional Computer, calculating important sums for your employer.
And just like computers today, those human Computers could be hard to understand. Imagine being a tax auditor or accountant by hand - no wonder this particular Computer, for taxes, was a very difficult job to hire for.
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Computers were real people. They had names. Sometimes being a Computer was a quick gig between others, as this US Naval Observatory report shows:
The following members of the Observatory force have been attached to the computing division at some time during the year ending June 30, 1903: Computer William M. Brown Computer John C. Hammond Computer Everett I. Yowell, for six months. Computer Herbert R. Morgan. Computer Eleanor A. Lamson Miscellaneous Computer Clara M. Upton, for two months. Miscellaneous Computer Arthur B. Turner, for six weeks. Miscellaneous Computer Lelia J. Harvie, for six weeks. Miscellaneous Computer Etta M. Eaton, for eight months. Miscellaneous Computer John R. Benton, for two months. Miscellaneous Computer Ella A. Merritt, for seven months. Miscellaneous Computer Samuel F. Rixey, for four months. Miscellaneous Computer Delonza T. Wilson, for five months. Miscellaneous Computer Charles E. Yost, for two weeks. [...] Very respectfully,
W.S. Eichelberger
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