Slashdot Mirror
1935 Meccano "Dam Busters" Computer Restored
rob1959 writes "A 1935 analog computer, built at Cambridge University and used to help plan the Dam Busters attacks on the Ruhr hydro dams in World War II, has been restored and put on display at Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology. The computer came to NZ around 1950 and was used, ironically, to build hydro dams there — and to calculate rabbit population numbers."
I read the book years ago. In it the designers built a tank and used marbles as scale model bombs. It doesn't say anything about a computer used in the design. I wonder if information about the computer was left out for reasons of security.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Historically the attack had a significant purpose, although generally lost on many. Quoting the minor footnote in the same wikipedia article:
... The Dams Raid enabled Churchill, in negotiations with the leaders of these new allies, to point to an effective strike against the hitherto apparently invincible German state so that he was taken more seriously as an ally than might otherwise have been the case. This was relevant vis-à-vis Stalin but also in the USA. Although Churchill had the sympathetic ear of Roosevelt, many of the US military staff had until then been less persuaded of the value of British experience and capabilities.[6]"
"An important reason for planning the raid was to persuade Stalin that Britain was capable of being an effective ally
Yes, a very sad loss. I was not sure anyone (surprisingly) on Slashdot picked this up.
I was privileged to attend his final talk the week before, given at Edinburgh. The video is now actually available here (for a while): http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/events/jamboree/2007/
This was absolutely fascinating, and I listened spellbound for an hour and a half. Do not be misled by the title as it covered much of the early development of AI in Britain (not just at Edinburgh). Analogous with the actual topic of this story, it details another, very early "physical computer" MENACE - constructed of matchboxes and beads.
A fuller obituary (that goes way beyond his short involvement with Turing) is here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituarie s/article2061886.ece
Truly a great pioneer and inspiration for us modern researchers in AI.
Interestingly enough, the development of the Data General mini was written into a book, "The Soul of a New Machine" which was one of the first attempts to capture the group dynamics of a high-technology R&D effort in the world of computers. Good read.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
However, some 20,000 workers were diverted for months from building the Atlantic sea wall defences to repair the dams, which had far-reaching effects on D-Day.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Well, on the assumption that you're an American, one might say ``just like your President''. But in that, the problem of Stalin's anger about the lack of a second front was a major political issue, and the consequences for Britain had there been no demonstration of good faith with the Russians during 1943 would have been serious. The Russian Army was, indeed, taking most of the brunt of the second world war at that point, in a town on the Volga.
Is this the Australian equivalent of walking to school through the snow, uphill both ways?
Tactically, the dam raid did not cause the catastrophic industrial disruption which had been hoped for, and the lack of a follow-up raid to suppress repairs meant that the Germans could recover. But strategically, Wikki has this to say:
" The strategic view
The Dams Raid was, like many British air raids, undertaken with a view to the need to keep drawing German defensive effort back into Germany and away from actual and potential theatres of ground war, a policy which culminated in the Berlin raids of the winter of 1943-44. In May 1943 this meant keeping the Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft defence forces' effort away from the Soviet Union; in early 1944, it meant clearing the way for the aerial side of the forthcoming Operation Overlord.
By far the greatest and most unexpected effect was on German food production. The Ruhr valley below the dams was a major source of vital food for Germany, and large areas of arable land were rendered unusable and huge numbers of farm animals were killed. This had an immediate negative effect on German morale. In addition, the pictures of the broken dams proved to be a morale boost to the Allies, especially to the British, still suffering under German bombing."
And of course, a major effect was to pursuade Harris to support Barnes Wallis's greatest contribution, the Tallboy and Grand Slam supersonic precision earth penetrators. These stopped the V2 and the V3, and sunk the Tirpitz, and well as the U-Boat pens at St Nazaire. The Americans wished they had something like them, and are only now developing something similar for use against Iran.
In the early '80s, I bought a used, rack-mounted electronic device. I also got some
analog multipliers along with them.
I took it to work where they had oscilloscopes I could use. One of the owners
of the company recognized what it was and told me it was an analog computer.
It had op-amp boards in it with a power backplane (you need +15 and -15 volts plus ground
for example). On the end of each board was a row of holes connected to various inputs
and outputs on the board.
There were other boards with nails coming out of them, that you could solder together
to make a "program". So you could switch from one program to another by pulling
out all the boards with nails and wires, re-arranging the op-amp boards, and putting in a different
set of boards with nails and wires.
I was in college at the time and they guy who explained how it all worked was
Ro Favreau. He had worked with analog computers for solving artillery
trajectory problems.
I remember fondly talking to him about it all and learning. I hope I will be able to pass on something I've learned over the years to some young man or woman engineer.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein