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."
If they make a non-computer-based version of Carnival, it might look like what it is supposed to replace IRL :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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.
machine about 10ft^2 with a platform driven by motors in xy
space, and having read this article I added:
int xdir=1; sDriveX(xdir);
int ydir=1; sDriveY(ydir);
while (true){
if (stopSwX()){xdir*=-1;sDriveX(xdir);}
if (stopSwY()){ydir*=-1;sDriveY(ydir);}
}
I fired it up, chuckled, then felt a bit nerdy, chuckled some more,
then got on with my work.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Anyone ever played real life Pong before?
I think it's called Tennis or something.
Doom3
This one might require lots of black velvet courtains.
Incase of a slashdotting, here's a link to the movie of Mechanical Pong in action!
if your prior art is rendered in prior art, do you have a case?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
That's really cool, but how much heat do all those relays produce over time? Unless I'm mistaken, it sounds like the perfect game to play on a cold day.
This has been there since 1977
fifteen jugglers, five believers
dude, this thing is more retro than the original game - phone relays?!
-Q
Charles Babbage would be proud.
Remain calm! All is well!
Why are there control sticks?, why not control it manually like air hocky.
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
And in germany people are complaining that we lost our edge when it comes to technology.
Face it, Germany once again is a technology leader (at least in the field of geeky true life retro gaming)
I'm probably making myself look very old, but I used to have a handheld mechanical pong game in the early 80's. It wasn't as dynamic as the pong game here, but it was wind up, and used a then-new LED as the ball.
It was called Blip and made by Tomy.
Here's a pic.
Nostalgia is fun
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
THEN we could use some small ball thing and have the wetware units keep the ball bouncing from side to side.
the speed of the ball moving from one side to the other would be the ping time ...
Yeah - that'd work. We could call it Ping Pong (but some boring fart would probably name it table tennis)
I wonder how to register a patent
But with a few more pullys and strings, perhaps they could create 3D pong, which i'm sure is much more playable IN 3D as opposed to simulated.
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Here I am, using my Atari like a sucker! Hey, I can't wait for the complete first season of Smurfs on DVD, then HeMan...
"We are the consumer whores, selling ourselves to purchase this generations technology, and attempting to revisit the electronic devices that raised us during childhood while our parents were selling themselves for their generations technology, and an inexpensive babysitter. Through nostalgic mediums we discover our true mother and father; television and video games."
-JW Malkin
...for pong is arcanoid. I'd love to see that mechanized:-)
Three people with laser pointers can play Pong. (The middle person, who plays the ball, also has to do the sound effects and keep score.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
What could we build now with electronics from 1958? Given the evils of silicon creep, it would be an interesting question whether the components would last 46 years.
Lastly, the power consumption is just a respectable 230w, about the same as a PC. Not bad!
See my journal, I write things there
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?)
When I was a little kid, I had a motorized Pong that my father found at a Salvation Army shop. It was roughly the size and form factor of one of those "streamlined" one-piece VT100s with the integral keyboard. It had little lights representing paddle and ball, in an attempt to try to seem like a "video game," but in fact they were driven by motorized arms-- you could hear them grinding, and the grinding got louder and louder until finally a gear broke or something and it no longer worked.
I wish I hadn't thrown it away, I could probably trade it for a Testarossa now or something.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
A while ago I was wondering how hard it would be to rig up a totally mechanical pac-man. Of course, the ghost AI would be near-impossible (unless you want to create a mechanical computer) but I was thinking you could have the pac-man be a hold in the board, and when you moved it, pellets would fall through...
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
If you were fascinated by this electromechanical version of Pong, check out their links to the work of Konrad Zuse. This guy designed and built the first programmable digital computer in 1936 in his parent's basement! Really amazing.
Sleep is futile.
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.
Nolan Bushnell may be a hugely cool dude who I respect a lot, but he did not invent Pong. That honor goes to Ralph Baer
And the statement "Konrad Zuse, inventor of the computer" isn't exactly accurate either.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
I love electro mechanical stuff. Once, when I was
a mere 8-9 year old kid, I got to be teached "how to
play" music on a *real* hammond organ. No No. You think you know what I'm saying but you don't.
It had *TWO* switches to switch it on.
I still remember why.
It's great fun to drop this gorgeous stuff on the the
newbies out there.
Hey even a few old timers will scratch their heads, but there really was a good technical reason for the *two* switches.
Enjoy and be puzzled.
Imagine playing the mechanical pong game on yor TV, where you can actually see that it is not quite an electronic game!
)9TSS
I found this copy on Google:
I bought the game around 1976 at a yard sale for about $0.25. It consisted of a cheap plastic casing shaped like a tv. The "screen" was translucent plastic. The "ball" was an arm with a light at one end (almost touching the screen) and a counterweight at the other end so that the arm was essentially ambivalent if it swung up or down. An electric motor moved the arm so that the arm always wanted to swing left or right. (Sorry about all these anthropomorphisms, it's the only way I can think to describe it.)
Each player had a handle that turned a mechnical bouncer up and down. If the arm swung past your bouncer, a buzzer buzzed.
It didn't keep score and it was never as fast as pong or as... um, exciting (if you can use that word with pong). But by golly I got it for a quarter and played the heck out of it. Then I took it apart and figured out how it worked. Then at some point I donated it to the landfill.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
The thing I'd like to see would be a physical incarnation of the SpaceCadet pinball game that MS distributes with Windows. Not that it's such a fantastic game (it isn't), but because it features some errm... interesting challenges from a physics point of view...
Linux user since early January 1992.
The game is interesting and fun, but the video has to be one of the best geek-umentaries I have ever seen. There should be an award for this.
5 points off, however, for the bit of misogyny with poor Almut misrepresenting the function of a relay.
!!!OUCH I'd hate to see my electric bill for playing this game 24/7.... On the plus side, I could probably use it as a space heater in the winter... -AD
--AD
This is not pong.
Pong was a game played with two "paddle" controllers, another word for variable resistors. The speed your paddle moved was controlled by the speed you moved the paddle. It was fundamentally an analog input.
This thing uses joysticks for controllers, as digital inputs. The speed the paddle moves is not controllable by the player.
This "Pongmechanik" thing is another game altogether, and not Pong at all. Nonetheless, a beowulf cluster of them would be intriguing.
Hunh, that's odd, I always assumed all German games were required to have some sort of pain element.
Cool game, but DAMN does the movie look and feel like it's about to turn into German porn at any time. You've got the cheesy lighting, the guy and the girl facing up, the German narrator who sounds like he's narrating god knows what kind of clothing-optional meetup.
And THEN the Atari guy, naked, shows up on screen. WTF???
Maybe it's just me?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.