Learn English – “Fire” a weapon before firearms existed

Before modern computers, the term computer was used to describe people who computed, and this term was indeed sometimes used as a job title or description. For instance, in an 1884 report of the U.S. Naval Observatory, a list of acknowledgements of assistance included these:

...Mr. Theo I. King throughout the year, in the grade of computer until April 20, 1897, and subsequently in the grade of assistant astronomer; Computer Frank B. Littell... Computer E. A. Boeger throughout the year; Computer G. K. Lawton ...

In fact the U.S. Civil Service had competitive examinations for the position of Computer. The 1890 test had sections on spelling, penmanship, copying, letter-writing, algebra, geometry, logarithms, and trigonometry. (The sample questions may be interesting to some.)

Computer was not just used for people, though; it came to be used for any tool which helped with computation. This was not just mechanical devices such as adding machines, but was also applied to sets of numeric tables and procedures published in books such as Screw Propeller Computer.

There probably was not much confusion when digital computers were coming into use, just as previously there was not a great deal of confusion between an adding machine, a book, and a civil servant. In the early years, computer was usually qualified by an adjective, e.g. electronic computer, at least at initial mention.

Etymonline says that the word clockwise arose in 1870, much later than clocks. Before that, the word sunwise was used, but it appears to have been fairly rare.

There were words (e.g. deiseil and tuathail) for these concepts in the Celtic languages, since in Celtic cultures the directions clockwise and counterclockwise are quite important, but English seems not to have felt a great need for these concepts, and used sunwise on the rare occasions the concepts came up. All the pre-1850 Google books hits I can find for sunwise or sun-wise are describing Celtic, Hindu, ancient Roman, or American Indian customs. The earliest reference I can find on Google books for sunwise is 1775.

From The origin and history of Irish names of places, by Patrick Weston Joyce (1875):

Deisiol [desshul] is another derivative from deis, and signifies towards the right hand, or southwards. The Celtic people were—and are still—accustomed to turn sunwise, i.e. from left to right, in the performance of various rites, some of them religious, some merely superstitious, and the word deisiol was used to designate this way of turning.

If sunwise had been a common term at the time, or if there had been another commonly-understood word meaning clockwise, the author would not have felt the need to explain it by "i.e. from left to right".