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.
Anyone ever played real life Pong before?
I think it's called Tennis or something.
Incase of a slashdotting, here's a link to the movie of Mechanical Pong in action!
Heres hoping they get on to a mechanical version of Leisure Suit Larry.
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
This has been there since 1977
fifteen jugglers, five believers
dude, this thing is more retro than the original game - phone relays?!
-Q
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)
Heres hoping they get on to a mechanical version of Leisure Suit Larry.
With all those relays, it would definitely bring new definition to the term "hot date."
I'm a much bigger fan of the organic version myself.
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.
With the age verification process of the original Leisure Suit Larry, at least people would learn a lot about US History during the 70's trying to run the thing :).
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...
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!
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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.
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.
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.
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.