Some mechanical and optical curiosities

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Here are a couple of clippings from “A Brief History of Optical Synthesis” by Derek Holzer:

A flame-based spectrum analyser - no moving parts:
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Patching analogue data:
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Iannis Xenakis presents an all-drawn music composition system:
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Demo:

This slide deck is one of many interesting contributions to Devine Lu Linvega’s request for examples of “anything relevant to paper computing”.

We also find a link to this, which I’m sure @Maurici_Carbo previously brought to my attention:

Devine’s website also has much of interest:
https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/paper_computing.html

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Thanks!
Yes!
Ancient Garden Machinery:

and:
Fluidic Computers:

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There’s also this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC

— as featured in Terry Pratchett’s “Making Money”.

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How about The Voder from 1939 …

and

Enjoy,

-Gordon

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I’m sad I’ve missed that thread, here’s a few things I’ve learnt since :slight_smile:
I hope you don’t mind me reviving this old thread.

Color Computer

Non-electronic computers that work when you color them according to a simple set of rules. The booklet contains three series of computers: computers that compare, computers that count, and computers that play. From a technical standpoint they are all NOR-based logic circuits designed by using truth tables, karnaugh maps, and maxterm expansions.

From a social, political, and environmental perspective, these computers are an exploration of computation without electricity and semiconductors, an attempt to reinvent digital systems away from efficiency and productivity, and a hopeful prototype to expose the inner workings of computers.~

Nomograms

A nomogram is a graphical calculating device, a two-dimensional diagram designed to allow the approximate graphical computation of a function. Each variable is marked along a scale, and a line drawn through known scale values (or a straightedge placed across them) will cross the value of the unknown variable on its scale.

Visual Multiplication

The stick method of multiplication involves properly placing and crossing sticks. You simply lay out sticks consistent with the place values of the digits being multiplied. Then, you count the places where the sticks cross.
Example: 62 x 21 = 1302

Lattice Multiplication

Lattice multiplication is a method of multiplication that uses a lattice to multiply two multi-digit numbers.
Example: 64 x 17 = 1088

Paper Microfluidics

Fluidics is the construction of computing systems using fluids. Paper microfluidics don’t require external pumps or power sources, they can be small, portable, disposable, easy to distribute and operate, low-cost, technically simple to make, and they only need tiny amounts of sample fluid. A minimal setup can be as simple as heating the lines drawn by wax crayon on extra absorbent paper, like cellulose paper and using droplets with food colouring.

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CARDIAC Instruction Set

CARDIAC (CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation) is a learning aid developed for Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1968 to teach high school students how computers work. The computer operates in base 10 and has 100 memory cells which can hold signed numbers from 0 to ±999. It has an instruction set of 10 instructions which allows CARDIAC to add, subtract, test, shift, input, output and jump.

Punched Cards

Punched cards would encode alphanumeric characters vertically, the IBM 12-row/80-column punched card format came to dominate the industry. It encoded 960 bits of memory.

Hex Codes

You can get 3.5 kilobytes per A4 page (font size 12pt, font Inconsolata) and OCR it with gocr at 400DPI.

24x24 ICN Sprite
0003 6331 397b 77f8 c0f0 f7ff fff0 8003 1c7e feff 0f07 078e f860 0c07 0300 301f 071f 7cf8 f007 7fff dcc0 c000 70f8 f8b0 0f07 4143 677f 7f3e ffe3 87cf cfcf 8703 84c4 8406 0efe fcf8

MICR

E-13B is a magnetic ink character recognition(MICR) code of 14 character, comprising the 10 decimal digits. Westminster is a printing and display typeface inspired by the machine-readable numbers printed on cheques. It’s akin to encoding QR code in typography.

Okay, here’s one last thing

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In the 1980s, a paper computer was presented on the German TV channel WDR, which was then used in many schools in the classroom. https://web.archive.org/web/20010331082121/http://www.wdrcc.de/khc.phtml

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I guess, the most British (electro-) mechanical computer to think of would be a OO gauge *) model railway shunting computer. Obviously turnouts (points/switches) are gates, so we are in the Turing game.
In order to make them work like electronic gates, we would need a few sensors: Have a turnout that converges from two tracks to a single track, which requires a train on any of the incoming tracks in order to power and route the other one to the outgoing track and you have an AND gate (you need two trains for one to pass). Disconnect the incoming tracks as a train passes through the turnout in order to let only the first one pass and you have an OR gate. Disconnect the incoming tracks as soon as there’s a train on each of them and you have an XOR gate. Turnouts in the other direction allow for a variety of multiplexers… However, beware, some extensive loft space may be required.
:wink:

*) For those not in the know, British model railroaders resort to a very special gauge of their own, as it’s Britain, for historical reasons, of course. Britain has a long tradition of industrial transport, including wagon ways and canals, and trains were not particularly early in this game. As a result, the British loading gauge (the diameter any rolling stock must not exceed) is narrower than in other countries, which not only plagued British Rail when it came to selecting Diesel engines, but also modellers: Built to HO scale, models of British locomotives were too small to house the motors. In order to make this fit, trains were modeled to a somewhat larger scale (1:76, about 10% bigger), but still run on HO scale track. The result of this is called OO gauge, which poses some interesting problems for the design of these models and their realism. While I’m not into model railways, I love the quirkiness of it, and it’s also a great example for wide ranging consequences of engineering decisions.
(Now you may know about Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his broad gauge railway, but while its success would have fixed the motor problem, it would have posed the track-scale to model-scale problem just the other way round. – There was never a chance!)