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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."
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Would of thought they needed the sheep population controlled more than the rabbits...
TFA also mentions the recent sad death of Donald Michie - a major force in early British computing. I had the honour of working with him on 'Freddy' the robot back in 1973 - back when the UK led the world in robotics.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
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
Operation Chastise did not have the military effect that was at the time believed. By 27 June, full water output was restored, thanks to an emergency pumping scheme inaugurated only the previous year, and the electricity grid was again producing power at full capacity. The raid proved to be costly in lives (more than half the lives lost belonging to allied POWs), but in fact no more than a minor inconvenience to the Ruhr's industrial output.
In his book Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer expressed puzzlement at the raids; destruction of one of the dams served no purpose at all, he claimed, and the failure to follow up with additional raids represented a major lost opportunity for the Allies.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
No. From the picture, thank God the work dress code got more casual. I'm guessing with motor oil and 3 piece suits, there was a laundromat next door.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
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
The rabbit population metrics were actually being used to determine how many rabbits it would take to destroy a dam. The dams the computer was used to build were just intended to be targets.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
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.
Churchill's main support base was the opposition and not his own party.
The opposition cheered him and wanted him as PM after Sir Neville Chamberlain was unable to halt Hitler by appeasement.
Please read the six volumes of Second World War written by Churchill.
Am right now reading Gathering Storm after reading Heinz Guderian's Panzer Leader.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
If you want to see a short clip (in color) of one of those devices in action, watch the George Pal version of "When Worlds Collide." (1951) In the script, one is used to verify the trajectory of the approaching planet.
The Dams Raid was, like many British air raids, basically base camping to keep the uber-GER clan from capping flags and holding the helo spawn point. Though the RUS clan was previously unimpressed, it let them get four levels higher on the PWNAGE ladder. Three BRIT-"lol-nub" team tipped the scales and made some righteous Fraps vids for Youtube.
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