Mechanical Computing

FTL writes "Tim Robinson has built a computer capable of solving polynomial equations -- using Meccano. His difference engine (mirror) uses a similar approach to Babbage's design. He's also created a differential analyzer (mirror) complete with a GUI. Both could be scaled up indefinitely to handle larger problems. 'Computing by steam' is possible."

MIT's 1930s differential analyzer

[Anonymous Coward]

Mechanical computers were built and used over 60 years ago to solve differential equations and other analytical type problems. I know MIT and UCLA had pretty good mechanical computers in the WWII era. Check out MIT's famous mechanical differential analyzer [mit.edu] for and idea of what was and is and awesome piece of hardware.

More Images and Links.

[technix4beos]

More images and links, courtesy of FreeCache [archive.org]. Due to Slashdot's lameness filter, I'm filling in some characters here so the character per line average goes up.

Enjoy a nice unsorted list of some images, courtesy of FreeCache. I wish more people would use this service in the future.

• RDA [freecache.org](Robinson's Differential Analyzer)
• Integrators [freecache.org]
• Input Table [freecache.org]
• Dual Output Table [freecache.org]
• Interconnect Section [freecache.org]

And some more links that the author is working on, apparently:

• Torque Amplifier [meccano.us]
• Helical Gearbox [meccano.us]

Re:Strange

[cjellibebi]

It is in the past for state of the art computers, but in the present for geeks playing around with computers that can easily be built. It's always fun to find an alternative method of building a computing device, and building it just for fun. I've seen logic-gates built out of all kinds of things.

Digital computers are more suited being built electronically (small and fast), but in the early days of computers, many were analog. The transition to digital happened around the same time as the transition from mechanical to electronic. Nowardays, analog computing is virtually unheard of, but I think that sometime during the late 80's/early 90's, they had found an application for analog computing in Neural Networks. I can't remember what it was, but the revival in analog computing has failed to materialise, so it must not have been very important.

Other mechanical computers

[Flyboy Connor]

A.K. Dewdney [csd.uwo.ca] describes in "The Tinkertoy Computer and Other Machinations" not only the famous Tinkertoy computer, but also how a computer can be constructed entitely from ropes and pulleys. Furthermore, in "The Planiverse" he describes how a computer can be built in a two-dimensional world (quite a feat, I can tell you).

Re:My first computer

[paul_21954]

my first digital computer was a digicomp 1. it got thrown away. there is a yahoo group dedicated to it and there is a pic and some info here: http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw/j-hist.shtml there used to be a simulation of it on a web page but i can't seem to find that (URL i had is dead).

Turing Machines are mechanical

[noamt]

A Turing Machine [wikipedia.org] can, theoretically, do all calculations a computer can, and it's entirely mechanical.
One can build such a machine with nuts and bolts or whatever, and solve every solvable problem.

Still, nobody actually built such a thing, AFAIK.

Re:Next thing to do..

[bhtooefr]

but I am not sure if Contiki can run as a server OS

http://www.sics.se/~adam/contiki/apps/webserver. ht ml

Contiki can even run a version of uVNC, which is Adam Dunkels' VNC server for 8-bit systems.

Re:Meccano in America

[Jeff Duntemann]

Meccano was invented in England in 1906 or so, and then when the Liverpool plant closed in the 70s, the subsidiary plant in France became the sole producer. In the 80's and 90's Meccano/France licensed the old American Erector trademark from whoever owned it, and Meccano sets were sold in the US under the Erector trademark. These were nothing like the old Gilbert Erector sets of the 1950s.

I don't think lawyers had anything to do with Meccano's eclipse, in America or anywhere else. Lego was always better at marketing, and because Lego is plastic, is much cheaper to make. I'm not exaggerating when I estimate that there are thousands of dollars of parts in those two mechanical computers. It's not a cheap hobby, heh.

Interestingly, Meccano Ltd. abandoned the red and green color scheme in 1964, so the parts used in this chap's difference engine are either very old, or manufactured by the third-party Meccano compatible parts vendors, the largest of which (called Exacto; no relation to the hobby knives) is in Argentina. It's really a "world system" tho most Meccano hobbyists are in Europe. I haven't bought any Meccano parts since 1997 or so, and the guy I used to buy them from has left the business. You may have to order them from Europe or South America.

Google around on the Web; you can order sets and parts from various places, and they turn up regularly on eBay. What you're unlikely to find these days are full sets sold in hobby shops. That's OK; to do anything ambitious or interesting you have to order tons of spare parts anyway. It's not cheap, but it's a lot of fun.

--73--

--Jeff Duntemann
Colorado Springs, Colorado

Mechanical computers....

[RayBender]

...were actually very common in the first half of the last Century. Vannevar Bush was big in that area, and many such computers were used as artillery computers in battleships. Google "Ford computer". There were also machines that could be programmed to solve differential equations outside of the artillery problem.

Konrad Zuse

[chris_sawtell]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a picture of
the first mechanical digital computer ever made. [epemag.com]

The whole book, The Life and Work of Konrad Zuse [epemag.com] is well worth a read.