Computers that used to be human
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
Professor of Mathematics, U.S. Navy, in Charge.
As popularly retold in Hidden Figures, human computers co-existed with electronic computers as late as the 1960s - real people, usually women, would perform calculations by hand and with tools like lookup tables, slide rules, and mechanical calculators.
Of course, Calculators also used to be people performing similar tasks. From the 1656 Glossographia, one of the earliest English dictionaries:
Calculate (calculo): to cast accounts, to reckon.
Compotist (compotista): a caster of accounts, a Reckoner, or Calculator.
Thomas Blount: Glossographia, or, A dictionary interpreting all such hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue with etymologies, definitions and historical observations on the same : also the terms of divinity, law, physick, mathematicks and other arts and sciences explicated via the University of Michigan Library’s Early English Books Online
Besides writing that hilariously-long subtitle, Thomas Blount believes that “reckon” is not a “hard word”, so it’s not included in this dictionary - too obvious, another example of “Everyone can see what a horse is”. In fact, I had a hard time finding any dictionary of this era that defined “reckon”, so here’s several entries from the 1604 A Table Alphabeticall that should help:
[fr] account, reckon
computation, an account or reckoning
impute, reckon, or assigne, blame, or to lay to ones charge
register, kalender, a reckoning booke
Robert Cawdrey: A Table Alphabeticall (1604), website edited by Raymond G. Siemens
At this time, “reckon” had a meaning closer to “compute” or “calculate”, with numerical or financial precision (this is where the phrase “the day of reckoning” comes from). That’s quite distant from its modern meaning of a casual guess or tentative belief.
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Now, doing real research takes a lot of time. The rest of this post is dedicated to making up stupid etymology because I think it’s funny:
Ruler as straightedge derives from ruler like the monarchy, since the king is the one who has to draw the line.
Protractor used to be someone who made meetings drag on longer by considering new angles (some say this role still exists today).
Washer-dryers used to be the same person, but it was divided into two distinct roles thanks to increasing specialization and powerful labor unions; never the twain shall meet again.
Liquor is too obscene to define here. I hardly even know her!
And if you believe the hype, Programmer might be next in line for tool-dom, like the Calculators and Computers of yore. Come to think of it, those folks can be hard to understand, too.