What field might have developed,which is equivalent, if the computers were not invented?

Question

What field might have developed,which is equivalent, if the computers were not invented?

Answer 1

Mechanical engineering, maybe.....to make things faster and more efficient (which is done with computers now).

Printing, movies, music to entertain people.

Really everything would have developed equally a little. A lot of development in every field has been helped by computers, so things would just now be getting to where they were say about 1980.

Answer 2

The only field I can think of that was developing was mathematics. During and after world war II,

the Soviets were short of computers so the Soviet mathematicians came up with very ingenious algorithms and math techniques to supplement the output of the crude computers.

Answer 3

As advanced as it is, printing technology may have gone over the top.  Our need for up to date information is hyper critical.  Computers and  online databases take care of that now, but the only way to get vast stores information in front of people without computers and networks is to print and duplicate.  The world probably does not have enough trees, so some other renewable/reusable medium might have developed.

Answer 4

I assume you mean digital computers.  But there is a whole separate class of "computers" that didn't make use of the von Neumann architecture and predated digital computers by many years, analog computers.  Analog computing probably would have been brought along and probably made to do some fairly interesting things.  

The need for a rapid method of integrating differential equations that cannot be solved in closed form is so great in a technological society that had digital computing not filled the requirement, something else would have.  Analog computing is the most likelt option.