First, wear your dust mask. Who knows where these machines have been?

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Analog computers are pretty cool, yet underrated tech. Although they aren’t very flexible compared to digital computers in the range of what they can do, they do their specific use case very well.

    Need to solve a partial differential equation in real time? Don’t bother with iterative algorithms, that’s fool’s math, playa. Just hook it up to an analog computer specifically designed to solve that PDE type, rig up some wires for the input and output to your oscilloscope for real time mathz.

    • kalkulat@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Ur so right! Diffy-Q has its uses, but analog was too advanced for us to grok so we had to settle for it. Newton ‘discovered’ gravity, and calculus, then found out how useful calc was!

      Non-linear? Hella faster! Nature went with analog long ago. No analog, no music!

    • hglman@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Tbf, the pinball machine is not really the same as an analog computer, it uses relays in the same way that a modern computer uses a transistor. There is no continuously variable part, just lots of on/offs.