Ways of Counting, The

HUMAN COMPUTING "Can you do addition?" the White queen asked. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" --- Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking-Glass. The word "computer" is often thought to have been coined with the advent of the first electronic computer in 1946. Actually, according to Webster's dictionary, the earliest recorded use of "computer" came exactly 300 years earlier, in 1646.