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Ten Weirdest Types of Computers

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the fringe-computing dept.

An anonymous reader writes to mention that New Scientist has a quick round-up of what they consider to be the ten weirdest types of computers. The list includes everything from quantum computers, to slime molds, to pails of water. "Perhaps the most unlikely place to see computing power is in the ripples in a tank of water. Using a ripple tank and an overhead camera, Chrisantha Fernando and Sampsa Sojakka at the University of Sussex, used wave patterns to make a type of logic gate called an "exclusive OR gate", or XOR gate."

7 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. It ain't ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    a computer if I can't get pr0n.

  2. What about the weirdest computer of all? by MaDMvD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The brain.

  3. Wetware by Rassleholic · · Score: 5, Informative

    The one I find most facinating is MONIAC. A cookie to whoever gets it to run linux.

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    Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
  4. The one at Unseen University by TheWoozle · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hex

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    Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
  5. Some better examples by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some better examples:

    • The Great Brass Brain, an analog tide predictor. It was built in 1910, and used until 1966, for regular tide predictions.
    • The Bay Model, a working 1.5 acre model of water flow in San Francisco Bay. Built in 1956, in use until 2000. (You can still visit, but it's not used as a research tool any more.)
    • SCEPTRON, a mechanical filter bank of quartz fibres which could record and play spectra onto photographic film. This was trainable as a speech recognition system. Early 1960s.
    • The Iconarama., the USAF's Etch-A-Sketch. This was one of the first large screen displays, basically a plotter/slide projector combo. It could write, but not erase selectively, so units were used in pairs, allowing a redraw by the unit not projecting, then a lamp switch. 1950s.
  6. homebrew purely optical computer by smellsofbikes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They're all impressed by using waves for building logic circuits.
    Want to build your own cheap, brilliantly visual set of logic gates to show kids how digital computing works? Nightlights. Each one is a NOT gate. You put two close to a third's sensor and you have a NOR. Put them some distance away with some blocking material around them (this is fussy) and you can get a NAND. A little bit of thinking and combinatorial logic and you can build anything else from those. I've built stacked, carrying half-adders this way, and it's pretty cool to watch small binary numbers get added.
    Two nightlights, each with its bulb by the other's sensor, are a flip-flop. Now you have memory.
    For extra credit, you can build a ring oscillator by putting an odd number of nightlights in a ring, so each is seeing the next one's sensor, and use that to clock your half-adders and flipflops.
    If I had a lot of money and time, it'd be fun to see how far this could be extended (before I had to start hiring kids as tube runners to keep the whole works going.)

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    Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
  7. Re:Random chance cannot create complex systems by jd · · Score: 5, Funny
    Give me just one example of a complex system that was created by chance.

    Earth. Jupiter. Saturn. Alpha Geminorum. The Andromeda galaxy. The United States tax system.

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    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)