Slashdot Mirror
Mechanical Pong
RotJ writes "Some crafty Germans have created an electromechanical conversion of the game Pong: "Pongmechanik is an absolutely physical game. The game is realized electromechanically, and essentially consists of four elements:
A relay computer, the mechanical movement with collision detection, the display and the acoustic components." Talk about analog retro chic."
saccade.com adds "This amazing device faithfully
re-creates the classic original video game with pulleys, wires,
motors and a (pre-chip, pre-transistor, pre-tube) relay based
computer. They were partly inspired by Konrad
Zuse, who created some of the first electromechanical and
electronic computers."
High quality mirror of the movie in case of the likely slashdotting
It's very cool. The video is in German with English subtitles.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Incase of a slashdotting, here's a link to the movie of Mechanical Pong in action!
This has been there since 1977
fifteen jugglers, five believers
since 1975... A completely mechanical version of the arcade version of Pong, in which the "ball" is an illuminated flashlight bulb connected by long rubber springs to the player's control knobs.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
They have so much geeky stuff there you could spend three or four days there and still not appreciate it all. There's captions to most things in English, so you don't have to speak German to get a lot out of the place.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
http://www.steverd.com/whatpong/tvtennis.jpg
I actually own a similar model. Green, somewhat simpler styling but the same mechanicals. It's still somewhere in my old bedroom at my parents place. If I were the stereotypical nerd still living at home, I would have a photo of it by now.
The Hammond uses tonewheels to create the different pitches. These are wheels with different bumps on them that produce a different inductance as they spin to make different pitches. Anyway, the hammond has a "start" and a "run" switch: the "start" switch is held on to run a starter motor, just like in a car; the starter motor gets the larger motors up to speed. Then, once they were at the correct speed (which you can tell by the sound), you push the "Run" switch to the on position and that engages the main motors so that the tonewheels can be spun at a constant speed. Once everything is running, you let go of both switches and wait for the tubes to warm up. Then it can finally be played.