EdS
September 6, 2019, 8:51am
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There are some great photos in this (German language) blog post from HNF (“yesterday’s news in computer history”):Ebbe und Flut (Ebb and Flow)
See also
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Tide-Predicting Machine No. 2, also known as Old Brass Brains, was a special-purpose mechanical computer that uses gears, pulleys, chains, and other mechanical components to compute the height and time of high and low tides for specific locations. The machine can perform tide calculations much faster than a person could do with pencil and paper. The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey put the machine into operation in 1910. It was used until 1965, when...
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A tide-predicting machine was a special-purpose mechanical analog computer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, constructed and set up to predict the ebb and flow of sea tides and the irregular variations in their heights – which change in mixtures of rhythms, that never (in the aggregate) repeat themselves exactly. Its purpose was to shorten the laborious and error-prone computations of tide-prediction. Such machines usually provided predic...
Bereits 1833 waren in Großbritannien Gezeitentafeln erschienen. 1872/76 baute William Thomson (später Lord Kelvin) eine Gezeitenrechenmaschine, die die Pegelstände der Themse berechnete und dabei Mond, Sonne, Erdrotation und einige weitere Parameter berücksichtigte. Mechanische Getriebe dienten als Integratoren, die über Seilrollengetriebe miteinander gekoppelt wurden. 1878 war sie auf der Pariser Weltausstellung ausgestellt.
In den USA ersann William Ferrel Anfang der 1880er Jahre eine erste Ge...
I do hope one day to visit the HNF in Paderborn (“Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum is the world’s biggest computer museum”)
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EdS
May 13, 2022, 1:54pm
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I just found this:Predicting the tide with an analog computer made from Lego
Inspired by a great video by Veritasium about analog computers and Andrew Carol’s Lego Antikythera mechanism I decided to try to build Sir William Thomson’s tide predicting machine out of Lego. Before I get into the details, here is a video of it running.
(Retro credentials: Lego Technic is from 1977… simulated annealing, used here to find a practical gear set, is a term coined in 1983, although the technique might be somewhat older.)
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Deutsches Museum in Munich has a pretty huge tide calculator in working condition. During pandemic, they did a 9min video on this thing: Der Gezeitenrechner - YouTube
The video has English subtitles, which unfortunately are horrendously out of sync shortly after start in being some 30+ seconds ahead of voice
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