[HN Gopher] Calculation before we went digital [pdf]
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Calculation before we went digital [pdf]
Author : nostrilwig
Score : 83 points
Date : 2023-12-15 10:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nicolamarras.it)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nicolamarras.it)
| tempodox wrote:
| A highly interesting collection of machinery, I'm impressed.
| userbinator wrote:
| Clearly not written by someone with native English ("subtract is
| became easy" is particularly memorable), but still not hard to
| understand, and the content is very interesting although it jumps
| around a bit --- I like how "physical" these early calculating
| machines are, as one could easily see the process being carried
| out.
| red_admiral wrote:
| Indeed, for learning arithmetic and many other areas of
| mathematics, being able to do calculations physically is better
| than (optimistically speaking) 90% of what goes as "ed tech"
| these days. Cuisenaire rods teach you basic counting and get
| things like 3+7=10 into your subconscious (or, if you have
| synaesthesia, also green+black=orange). The abacus, back when
| it was taught, made place-value and things like "to subtract 8
| you subtract 10 then add 2" a physical as well as a mental
| operation which helps with math learning the way phonics helps
| with reading. Later on, of course, slide rules do the same for
| logarithms (as is explained in the linked PDF).
|
| I wish we had more of this back in our classrooms.
| Mr_Minderbinder wrote:
| Yet another conflation of digital and electronic. There have
| always been "digital" modes of computation.
| analog31 wrote:
| To be fair, despite the title, the article does describe
| digital mechanical calculators as "digital."
|
| An amusing aside, amongst electronics and audio people, there's
| an ongoing debate about whether a switchmode power supply or
| amplifier is "digital." Also, when CD players first came out, I
| was in a stereo shop, and some speakers were labeled as
| "digital ready."
| eesmith wrote:
| Mmmm, that was pretty clear from the text.
|
| Top of page 6: 'I wrote "The calculation before we went
| digital", but the digital age started when the first man has
| counted some objects with the fingers (digitus in Latin means
| finger). ... With the digital system the numbers are
| represented by single units, such as the bead of the abacus or
| a number: counting the same stones'
|
| The author then goes through pages describing pre-computer
| digital systems, including the pascaline, with 'a digital
| display of the sixteen century'.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I still have the Odhner calculator, as seen on page 19 of that
| PDF, that my grandfather was _still using_ at his SME in the
| eighties (he owned a little SME making tailor-made clothes)! I
| think that at some point in the fifties he bought a stock of
| desks, calculators, typewriters, etc., used, from another
| company. And then he kept using these old machines for decades.
|
| As a teenager I'd go help for a few bucks: I'd use the typewriter
| to write letters plus actual "carbon copies" (literally putting
| two or three sheets of paper separated by a carbon sheet).
|
| Never understood how that Odhner calculator worked but I still
| have it (and I had no idea it was from 1920: TIL)!
|
| P.S: I also wrote my first program used "for real" back then: I
| wrote a program on my Commodore 64 that'd compute the discount
| for his clients (like, say, hotels) according to how many suits
| they'd buy. And I printed the results on a dot-matrix printer.
| This saved my grandpa lots of time!
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| >literally putting two or three sheets of paper separated by a
| carbon sheet
|
| I had to chuckle at your use of "literally", as I too (and
| probably many others here) would never imagine that there was a
| figurative way to do this. I should add, carbon paper is not
| literally made out of carbon.
|
| Separately, I noticed the image of the Playboy Magazine cover
| used in the article. It was customary for them to always
| include the bunny logo somewhere as part of the image; in this
| case it is embossed on the leather case for the slide rule.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Its funny how "CC:" has survived into the digital age. I wonder
| how many 20-somethings or younger realize what it really
| means?!
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Hell I'm 35 and most of what I saw growing up were
| "carbonless" copy forms (the yellow and pink ones). Using
| actual carbon paper for copies seems to have started falling
| out of common use in the 80's if not earlier
| argiopetech wrote:
| For those who wish to learn more about the slide rule, I
| recommend Asimov's (yes, that Asimov) book, "An Easy Introduction
| to the Slide Rule." I was lucky to pick up a physical copy as a
| young man, but it appears it's available as a PDF online.
|
| That, plus any of the $10 vintage slide rules on eBay, opens a
| while new world of fun. I still use slide rules fairly regularly.
| I find that I gain better understanding of the equations I use
| the most when I can reformulate them for easy solving on a slide
| rule (e.g., so you can solve an equation with two operations with
| one slide move).
| I_complete_me wrote:
| Save the $10 and look at the selection of online virtual slide
| rules at https://www.sliderules.org/.
| argiopetech wrote:
| This is an amazing resource, but it just doesn't beat the
| feel or utility of having a real slide rule in your hands.
| Part of the appeal is the ability to rapidly compute at the
| expense of precision (it's the fundamental tradeoff of the
| slide rule, though larger slide rules and careful use try to
| minimize it), but the emulated versions encourage precision
| over speed by design.
| abecedarius wrote:
| I've bought a couple of slide rules and feel like I still
| haven't quite gotten it:
|
| - a ThinkGeek one which had an offputting amount of
| stiction despite not-bad reviews
|
| - a used one which was better, but such that I guess I
| still need to learn how to clean or lubricate it to the
| standard these things must've been meant for.
| argiopetech wrote:
| I clean and lubricate my metal and plastic slide rules
| occasionally. A good wipe down and petroleum jelly is
| sufficient. Bamboo slide rules seem to be more slippery,
| so I just keep them clean.
|
| You want it to move freely and without grit, but not so
| freely that it has a chance of slipping. When necessary,
| adjustment by loosening the top and bottom scales can be
| accomplished by using the cursor to fix alignment.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Nothing is moving at all, no matter where I tap or drag it?
| I'm on mobile Firefox.
| zvr wrote:
| People with interest in calculators might be interested to read
| _Empire of the Sum_ by Keith Houston, which provides some
| historical notes on calculating before the electronic and digital
| revolution.
|
| -- A proud owner of a Faber Castell slide rule, inherited from my
| father, and an Odhner mechanical calculator, from my grandfather.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| The article doesn't mention one of the earliest calculators (an
| analog computer of sorts) - the "Antikythera mechanism" from
| c.100 BC. An incredibly intricate device for calculating and
| indicating the positions of the planets.
| tzs wrote:
| In 2015 I took a slide rule with me when I took my US ham radio
| license exams. I also took an HP-15c [1], which is what I
| actually used, but I wasn't sure that the calculator would be
| allowed [2] so brought the slide rule just in case.
|
| The exam is multiple choice and usually the choices are far
| enough apart that you don't need very much accuracy to figure out
| which one must be the right one, so even rudimentary slide rule
| skills would be sufficient. You usually just need to get 1 or 2
| significant digits and the right order of magnitude.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-15C
|
| [2] If your calculator has memory or is programmable you have to
| convince the examiner that you have cleared memory and erased all
| your programs.
| dahart wrote:
| > The slide rules, also known colloquially as "slip sticks", were
| the only calculators available before the electronic age,
| traveled with the Apollo 11 on the Moon and, essentials on board
| aircraft for the dead reckoning, are still required as a means of
| emergency.
|
| This sentence is funny for several reasons, not least of which is
| it comes after a long list of pre-electronics calculators.
|
| The mention of dead reckoning totally reminded me of one of the
| coolest math books I ever bought, and I think I first heard about
| it in a comment here on HN. Maybe I can pass this recommend on to
| someone else who will appreciate it. "Dead Reckoning: Calculating
| Without Instruments" by Ronald Doerfler
| https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Reckoning-Calculating-Without-In...
|
| It covers how to do lots of calculations very efficiently
| mentally or manually on paper, not just arithmetic but roots and
| powers, logarithms and exponents, and trig functions
| (sin,cos,tan,asin,acos,atan). Lots of interesting number theory,
| lots of stuff that's useful in computer science, and a tour de
| force of the most important analog calculator this article didn't
| cover: the human calculator. ;)
| mooreds wrote:
| If you are interested in this, you might enjoy this Odd Lots
| episode, about how banks worked before computers:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpe_K8PzbQ
| bvan wrote:
| This is a fantastic resource, actually.
| zhrvoj wrote:
| Everything went well then. I graduated without computers help -
| on computers. Today it's vice versa. Today every new os version -
| just new clicks or taps, for poor little John to make it with
| less clicks, and this is always presented as biig advance in
| computer field. Yes, I mean Microsoft and Apple and ....
| Everything screwed up for the sake of profit for the
| shareholders. Every new tech carries the burden of shareholders
| just thinking of profit.
| Jemm wrote:
| Father worked as a calculator. Room full of guys summing columns
| in their heads. When mechanical calculators came out they ran
| them in parallel with the human calculators.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I'm currently reading Between Human and Machine: Feedback,
| Control, and Computing before Cybernetics, which covers the
| development of analogue computers from 1914 to 1945. It's really
| interesting to see the development of physical machines which
| were used to support complex real-time calculations (e.g. from
| gunfire control on battleships to early radar-driven AA guns) and
| how these transitioned to electronic (but not yet digital)
| solutions.
|
| What's also interesting is that the development of these machines
| led to the first published use of terms such as 'systems
| integration' and the recognition that the feedback control
| aspects of a system were just as important as the optics,
| mechanics, etc. Also how cross-domain fertilization occurred,
| e.g. the realisation that servo motors were in a sense
| amplifiers, and thus that maths developed to support
| communications systems could be applied almost directly to
| physical control systems.
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