The Turbo Entabulator: A 3D-printed Mechanical Computer

An anonymous reader writes "Have you ever been sitting there, quietly computing something and thinking to yourself, 'If only this process were somehow billions of times slower, less reliable, and involved lots of physical labor?' If so, the Turbo Entabulator is the machine you've been looking for! It's a (nearly-entirely) 3D-printed mechanical computer. With three single-digit counters for memory, it's driven by a hand-cranked, Jacquard-style punch card reader. You can even download the files and build your own."

Comments

people asking why bother

[Guano_Jim]

We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

Hats off to the designer.

Re:people asking why bother

[lgw]

You can save some confusion and annoyance by just accepting that "on a 3D printer" is the latest "everything old is new again", just like "in the cloud", "on a handheld", "on the internet" and "on a computer" each were in turn. For each new engineering platform all the obvious stuff will be done for the first time on that platform, usually with some fairly minor cleverness involved. Easier just to accept the cycle of faux-new than to try to fight it.

Re:Yes.

[Mitchell314]

Every programmer at some point in their life wonders if they can make a computer out of a given thing in front of them.

Which given how many times computers and cpus have been made in minecraft and dwarf fortress, explains a lot.

Re:Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it tells you that neckbeards are trapped in 1997.