Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mechanical Computing

Posted by timothy on from the meccano-punk dept.

FTL writes "Tim Robinson has built a computer capable of solving polynomial equations -- using Meccano. His difference engine (mirror) uses a similar approach to Babbage's design. He's also created a differential analyzer (mirror) complete with a GUI. Both could be scaled up indefinitely to handle larger problems. 'Computing by steam' is possible."

4 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. MIT's 1930s differential analyzer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mechanical computers were built and used over 60 years ago to solve differential equations and other analytical type problems. I know MIT and UCLA had pretty good mechanical computers in the WWII era. Check out MIT's famous mechanical differential analyzer for and idea of what was and is and awesome piece of hardware.

  2. Re:Strange by cjellibebi · · Score: 4, Informative
    It is in the past for state of the art computers, but in the present for geeks playing around with computers that can easily be built. It's always fun to find an alternative method of building a computing device, and building it just for fun. I've seen logic-gates built out of all kinds of things.

    Digital computers are more suited being built electronically (small and fast), but in the early days of computers, many were analog. The transition to digital happened around the same time as the transition from mechanical to electronic. Nowardays, analog computing is virtually unheard of, but I think that sometime during the late 80's/early 90's, they had found an application for analog computing in Neural Networks. I can't remember what it was, but the revival in analog computing has failed to materialise, so it must not have been very important.

  3. Other mechanical computers by Flyboy+Connor · · Score: 3, Informative

    A.K. Dewdney describes in "The Tinkertoy Computer and Other Machinations" not only the famous Tinkertoy computer, but also how a computer can be constructed entitely from ropes and pulleys. Furthermore, in "The Planiverse" he describes how a computer can be built in a two-dimensional world (quite a feat, I can tell you).

  4. Re:My first computer by paul_21954 · · Score: 3, Informative

    my first digital computer was a digicomp 1. it got thrown away. there is a yahoo group dedicated to it and there is a pic and some info here: http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw/j-hist.shtml there used to be a simulation of it on a web page but i can't seem to find that (URL i had is dead).