Could This Have Been The World's First Computer?

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Sort of.

We used those machines in my undergrad statistics courses. The procedure for square roots was less than straightforward, to the point that it was easier to successively approximate: take a guess, square it, see how close you got, & try again. I performed so many calculations on those old bombers that to this day I can guess the sqrt of any number within about 5% or less. I sometimes do it as a party trick among geeks.