[HN Gopher] The Telefunken RA 770 Analog Computer
___________________________________________________________________
The Telefunken RA 770 Analog Computer
Author : Stubb
Score : 85 points
Date : 2022-10-19 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.analogmuseum.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.analogmuseum.org)
| smm11 wrote:
| Dude in my town had a mid-60s Telefunken van. I was maybe 12
| years old (late 70s) when I'd see it driving around. It was lost
| on me, but I appreciate the memory.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| I'm not sure where you were, but what you saw was almost
| certainly a service van with the Telefunken name and logo
| because Telefunken was one of the major brands of hifi radio
| consoles and table radio sets at the time. As the availability
| of FM radio increased in North America, so did the popularity
| of the living room hifi console. FM Stereo broadcasting
| furthered the boom. When community cable tv companies began to
| include FM Stereo stations in their services, often with
| stations normally out of range of home antennas, there was a
| further sales boom. As with all major brands, Telefunken hifis
| came with a record turntable and AM/FM (later FM Stereo) radio
| band receiver, but Telefunken also included Short and Long Wave
| bands as standard features. Major North American brands
| integrated TV sets into their high end consoles while
| Telefunken remained radio-turntable only. Eventually the market
| demand for large hifi consoles died off and now they are
| collectible relics, boat anchors, or landfill.
| lb1lf wrote:
| In the same vein, Ars Technica did an amazing story on analog
| computers in the US Navy a few years ago:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/05/gears...
| Maursault wrote:
| What were the particular applications for the RA 770 compared to
| other analog computers?
| ktpsns wrote:
| The same guy of this website also sells a modern version of the
| Telefunken mainframe, see https://analogparadigm.com/ and an
| arduino-like version, see https://the-analog-thing.org/ Both pop
| up at HN from time to time.
| nico wrote:
| Cool. Just realized they were also featured on this episode of
| Veritasium: https://youtu.be/GVsUOuSjvcg
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I normally tell people interested in analog computing to just
| buy some modular synthesizer gear (or download one of the many
| free software implementations) but this is a surprisingly
| affordable alternative. The documentation is especially good,
| since modular synths and their documentation are aimed at
| musicians rather than engineers, and so tend to begin with
| oscillators rather than scalars.
|
| The analog thing uses 3.3v signals which is a common standard,
| but 5v is nowadays much more popular on modular synths due to
| the predominance of the Eurorack format. If you know for sure
| that you enjoy making bleep bloop noises as well as doing
| Science! then you might want to go with modular gear form the
| start, since you'll also have access to a vast universe of
| filters, function generators, and so on.
|
| If you'd like to know more about this, please enjoy this
| fantastic tutorial by my late friend Rob Hordijk:
| https://rhordijk.home.xs4all.nl/G2Pages/index.htm
| glonq wrote:
| Immediately reminded me of "Telefunken U47". RIP Frank Zappa.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Telefunken slapped their name on the pairing of the legendary
| Neumann U47 microphone with their amplification for the USA
| market:
|
| https://wikiless.org/wiki/Neumann_U47
|
| So Frank was correct to use the Telefunken U47 term, but
| audiophiles and engineers found it a bit misleading.
| flobosg wrote:
| (2007)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-19 23:01 UTC)