Slashdot Mirror
Mechanical Computing
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."
Strange. I thought Mechanical Computing was in the past
No really - this is art...
The steaming vents on the case gave mute testimony to the utter destruction the water made as it transisioned rapidly from liquid form to gaseous form. Poor devil...
Of course, I could also see something like that from the original "Wild, Wild West" tv show (and not the horrific movie of the same name), or maybe "Brisco County, Jr.".
"Snoochie-Boochies? Who talks like that? That is babytalk!"-Jay, Chasing Amy
1835 called; they want their revolutionary technological ideas back.
Don't forget about the Tinkertoy computer
Table-ized A.I.
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.
I always wanted a PC I could shovel coal into.
Reminds me of the nano-scale "rod logic" used for computation in Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". Those were rods with bumps on them arranged in a 3d grid, and as the were moved back and forth the bumps somehow performed computation.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
I recon this guy should try to build a machine that uses computational logic gates (NAND, NOR, etc). From that, he can build up things like binary adders and simple flip-flops. Then, add an instruction-decoder, and an arithmetic-logic unit - and viola - a Meccano CPU.
was a mechanical rig that used 1 inch soda straws for 1's and blank holes fro zeros. You pulled a crank and it added two numbers. I wish I could remember its name - it was some sort of "science kit." from the 60's.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Enjoy a nice unsorted list of some images, courtesy of FreeCache. I wish more people would use this service in the future.
And some more links that the author is working on, apparently:
user@host$ diff
Of course mechanical computation is possible. The easiest example I can think of is division/multiplication. Two gears, the ratio of which is the multiplier. Turn the first gear a number of turns equal to the multiplicand and count the rotations of the second gear.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Into the old saying that physicists love to say: "crank the handle on the mathematics".
Linux probably would a bit too large to fit, but a port of Contiki might be worth waiting for, given their track record... Now if only someone would care to make a mechanical Ethernet NIC and we could build a fully mechanical webserver. You wouldn't be able to stand the noise a slashdotting of that would make!
...and William Gibson, called The Difference Engine. I recommend it, it's a fascinating idea, which is basically: what if computer became available much earlier, in the form of mechanical computers--they would take up entire factory buildings, and people would essentially become experts at creating these ornate ivory punchcards (if I remember correctly...). Actually, I should really pick it up and read it again.
Serious kudos due here - it's a labour of love.
Of course, you would have to modify this port of Linux to take into account how the Meccano compouter handles IO, etc. Add a means of networking, and you can turn it into a Linux server. Add user Input/Output, and you have a workstation.
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).
That's OK, but for the man of the 50's on the go what do you do? You get a CURTA calculator. They were said to be popular with rally drivers for instance.
They are relatively valuable and pretty nifty calculator. You can try to get a feel for it with the simulator. Enjoy!
. . . . Linux gets ported to steampunk arcitecture?
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
Contiki/Linux just needs to be compiled on a real compiler with a back-end that produces code that the Meccano CPU can run. As for which OS to try out, try and compare the size of a Contiki kernel to thet of a Linux kernel, and go with the smallest (question: Is there a size comparison of the two kernels on a machine that is capable of running both OS's?). As all the flip-flops for memory/storage will have to be built by hand, it would make sense to try the smallest OS on the machine. I suspect that Contiki would be the smallest, but I am not sure if Contiki can run as a server OS, so it would be useless, unless you also made user Input/Output devices out of Meccano as well.
My dad was selling those newfangled electronic Friden calculators back in the mid sixties when I was a little kid. Once in a while, he'd bring home one of the old mechanical machines that had been traded in, like this one. I'd love to have one of those babies now.
big deal. This Thing is over 2,000 years old! It's an astronaumical computer and clock thingie. With gears and everything. "boo ya," as the kids say.
A Turing Machine can, theoretically, do all calculations a computer can, and it's entirely mechanical.
One can build such a machine with nuts and bolts or whatever, and solve every solvable problem.
Still, nobody actually built such a thing, AFAIK.
but I am not sure if Contiki can run as a server OS
. ht ml
http://www.sics.se/~adam/contiki/apps/webserver
Contiki can even run a version of uVNC, which is Adam Dunkels' VNC server for 8-bit systems.
Meccano was invented in England in 1906 or so, and then when the Liverpool plant closed in the 70s, the subsidiary plant in France became the sole producer. In the 80's and 90's Meccano/France licensed the old American Erector trademark from whoever owned it, and Meccano sets were sold in the US under the Erector trademark. These were nothing like the old Gilbert Erector sets of the 1950s.
I don't think lawyers had anything to do with Meccano's eclipse, in America or anywhere else. Lego was always better at marketing, and because Lego is plastic, is much cheaper to make. I'm not exaggerating when I estimate that there are thousands of dollars of parts in those two mechanical computers. It's not a cheap hobby, heh.
Interestingly, Meccano Ltd. abandoned the red and green color scheme in 1964, so the parts used in this chap's difference engine are either very old, or manufactured by the third-party Meccano compatible parts vendors, the largest of which (called Exacto; no relation to the hobby knives) is in Argentina. It's really a "world system" tho most Meccano hobbyists are in Europe. I haven't bought any Meccano parts since 1997 or so, and the guy I used to buy them from has left the business. You may have to order them from Europe or South America.
Google around on the Web; you can order sets and parts from various places, and they turn up regularly on eBay. What you're unlikely to find these days are full sets sold in hobby shops. That's OK; to do anything ambitious or interesting you have to order tons of spare parts anyway. It's not cheap, but it's a lot of fun.
--73--
--Jeff Duntemann
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Charles Babbage gave up on the differiensial engine because he thought he could build a general purpose mechanical computer - the Analytical Engine! To recreate that device would really rock... if I had the time, money and (last but not least) the knowhow, I might try it myself...
Off course, an Analytical Engine would be way larger than a Difference Engine , since it would have to include a CPU (the 'mill'), a input device (Babbage himself suggested punch cards - an idea which the early electromechanical computers picked up), an output device (Babbage wanted to built a complete, automated printingpress, curveplotter and a bell to alert the operator of errors),and last but not least a 'store' (memory - the one envisoned by Babbage would store 1000 numbers, each 50 digits long). The Analytical Enginge was to be programable - which was it great strenght compared to the Differensial Engine - in a language resembling todays assembler languages. Such a machine would be slow and lowpowered by our standards, but would have been a gigantic leap forward back in the 1830's... shame he never got around to build it.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
um... yah, he's cleverer than me i'd say :)
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
In order to succeed in the market today, it has to run viruses. Is someone working on version of rugrat for this beast?
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
the first mechanical digital computer ever made.
The whole book, The Life and Work of Konrad Zuse is well worth a read.