I have been messing around with a Commodore 128 again, and it sent me down one of
those historical rabbit holes that makes the computer suddenly feel less like an
isolated object and more like part of a gigantic human story.

We talk about automation like computers invented it. They absolutely did not.
People were building machines that carried sequences in their physical structure
long before electricity. A cam could encode motion in its shape. A pinned cylinder
could encode a sequence. Gears could preserve a mathematical relationship. Clocks
could coordinate displays and moving figures. Mechanical calculators could carry
numbers through actual moving wheels.

Then you get to punched media, Babbage, tabulating machines, relays, tubes,
transistors, chips, and eventually this beige C128 on my desk where I can type a
few BASIC lines and make a vector display animate itself.

The technology changes so violently that it is easy to miss the continuity. The
same human question keeps reappearing: can I arrange a machine so that after I
start it, the mechanism carries out the tedious sequence for me?

That is computer history before computers, and it is fantastic.