[HN Gopher] Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers (1953) [v...
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Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers (1953) [video]
Author : teqsun
Score : 276 points
Date : 2024-08-20 12:02 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| teqsun wrote:
| Thought it was very interesting to see the precursors of modern
| computers and how they achieved the various mathematical
| functions mechanically
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| And fascinating too that, unlike digital computers where
| operations take clock cycles, calculations in an analog
| computer are effectively instantaneous.
| bluGill wrote:
| Backlash means there is delay in analog computers that is
| generally worse than in digital. However the calculations you
| perform on analog computers are generally much simpler and so
| you don't notice the lag.
|
| edit: I should point out that some calculations that are
| trivial on analog computers and difficult on digital and so
| analog may have less lag on some specific calculations.
| However in general it is safe to say digital is faster
| overall even though in the real world you will find many
| examples where analog is faster.
| pragma_x wrote:
| It's better than that. As an analog computer, both the inputs
| and outputs are _continuous_. So it's possible to get down to
| very small deltas that are only limited by the internal
| precision of the system itself, and the precision of
| measuring those inputs and outputs.
|
| At the same time, precision is dictated by machining
| tolerances for the instruments in the calculation chain, as
| well as any mechanical forces in play at the time. Even the
| temperature of parts can change the dimensions of parts which
| can introduce error. And then there's the accumulation of
| error across a deep enough mechanical "pipeline".
|
| What really gets me is how there is this tradeoff between
| analog and digital computers. Digital systems don't have
| precision errors from miss-shaped parts, but instead opt for
| errors in quantization (digitization) instead.
| schiffern wrote:
| The neat part is that it's _almost_ instantaneous, but not
| quite.
|
| How electricity flows through analog circuits and chooses the
| right path is another fascinating subject. Seeing how it
| actually works "in action" seems to glimpse some insights
| into ultra-fast computing paradigms: not just computing
| _with_ analog circuits, but also structuring computation
| _like_ circuits.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AXv49dDQJw
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not instantaneous on any scale a digital system would regard
| as important. You can't turn a shaft very far in a
| nanosecond, and you are in general limited by the inertia of
| the mechanical system as well as quantities such as bearing
| overheating, lubricant viscosity, the maximum force that can
| be applied through any particular component, and so on.
| shagie wrote:
| The Thomson (also known as Lord Kelvin of degrees K fame) tide
| predicting machine takes us back to the late 1800s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide-predicting_machine
|
| One implementation of it was a notable part of WWII:
|
| > They came to be regarded as of military strategic importance
| during World War I, and again during the Second World War, when
| the US No.2 Tide Predicting Machine, described below, was
| classified, along with the data that it produced, and used to
| predict tides for the D-Day Normandy landings and all the
| island landings in the Pacific War.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide-Predicting_Machine_No._2
|
| From Veritasium : The Most Powerful Computers You've Never
| Heard Of - the tide calculator plays a prominent part of the
| video. https://youtu.be/IgF3OX8nT0w (the next video is also in
| the same topic - Future Computers Will Be Radically Different
| https://youtu.be/GVsUOuSjvcg and that gets into more modern
| implementations and uses - https://the-analog-thing.org is the
| device shown in the video).
| relwin wrote:
| What's amazing is some of these fire-control systems using up
| to 15kW to keep all the motors and mechanicals moving!
| kallistisoft wrote:
| I absolutely adore this series of videos! Analog/mechanical
| computing is a fascinating field that is often ignored.
|
| Also the pedagogical style of these videos is fantastic, simple,
| to the point, with no unnecessary distractions. It's hard to find
| this level of quality in the current 'click and subscribe'
| universe!
|
| Happy to see this pop on HN :)
| pvg wrote:
| _the current 'click and subscribe' universe!_
|
| The audience for this film was heavily advertised to, in order
| to get them to subscribe:
|
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Untitled_%282%29World_...
|
| And if that didn't work, many were simply coerced into it by
| the state. You don't need to pester a captive audience to smash
| the like button.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| A similarly interesting video in this pedagogical style is
| 'Around The Corner - How Differential Steering Works (1937)':
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI
| pfdietz wrote:
| Another archaic technology is magnetic amplifiers. These were
| more used in Germany (in the Kriegsmarine and also in the V-2),
| but got some more play in the US immediately after the war,
| before being largely supplanted by transistors.
|
| The idea here was to use magnetic saturation to modulate the
| behavior of a transformer, allowing a small control current to
| modulate larger AC currents.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_amplifier
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| I highly recommend "Between Human and Machine Feedback, Control,
| and Computing before Cybernetics" by David A. Mindell
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I've seen a few of these old instructional videos.
|
| In addition to the content itself, I'm always _very_ amazed by
| the fact they can produce these videos without computers!
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The difficulty of editing in the pre-computer days may have
| helped, in that they probably went to a great deal of effort to
| fully plan out the content instead of YOLO'ing "we'll fix it in
| post".
| mrandish wrote:
| Having worked professionally through the evolution video
| production from the early 80s to the present day, variously as
| an editor, videographer director and producer, then switching
| to making digital video production tools (both live and post)
| as a programmer, product manager, etc it's hard for me to watch
| anything and not think about how it was made along with
| pondering the tooling and workflow.
|
| So, like you, I watched the film (as it was certainly produced
| on 16mm film) and was surprised by the quality of the graphics,
| titles and animation. Even the shooting and editing was
| remarkably good for what's obviously an industrial-grade
| training film produced on an assembly line. I was especially
| taken by the fidelity of the full screen title slides featuring
| soft-edged drop shadows. When I started out in video, the first
| place that hired me was a tiny hole-in-the-wall studio that
| produced corporate and industrial sales, marketing and training
| videos for mid-sized clients on 3/4 inch U-Matic tape. And they
| still laid out titles by hand a line at a time with a manual
| Letraset-type machine. The titles we did in the mid-80s didn't
| look as nice as what these guys were doing in 1953!
| zer00eyz wrote:
| This is a great primer on one facet of the Navy and "technology".
|
| So much of early computing has some tie back to the navy. It
| isn't an accident that Grace Hopper was an admiral and not a
| General. Much of Cray's early work is littered with "Navy"
| (including his transfer from Europe to the Pacific).
|
| It's a fascinating bit of WWII and Post war history that is worth
| exploring.
| _kb wrote:
| That history extends back the other direction too with
| mechanical tide prediction machines, or even early marine
| chronometers for navigation - the OGps if you will.
| jameshart wrote:
| Navigation and gunnery have always been driving forces for
| mathematical innovation so there are often naval connections to
| important discoveries and inventions.
|
| But don't sleep on the importance of land-based artillery and
| military surveying and cartography as motivation too. Long
| range naval gunnery with these kinds of mechanical computers to
| take into account things like course, speed and rolling motion,
| was all building on earlier static land-based gunnery methods
| using tables and nomograms derived through complex calculations
| - some of Babbage's difference engine work was calculating
| gunnery tables.
| teachrdan wrote:
| This is the whole conceit behind Neil deGrasse Tyson's book
| "Accessory to War":
|
| "Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics
| and the Military is the fifteenth book by American
| astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson
| which he co-wrote with researcher and writer Avis Lang. It
| was released on September 11, 2018 by W. W. Norton & Company.
| The book chronicles war and the use of space as a weapon
| going as far back as before the Ancient Greeks, and includes
| examples such as Christopher Columbus' use of his knowledge
| of a lunar eclipse and the use of satellite intelligence by
| the United States during the Gulf War. While speaking on the
| book, Tyson told National Geographic that he regards the
| collaboration between science and the military as a 'two-way
| street.'"
|
| FWIW Tyson is quite critical of the application of
| astrophysics research to military ends.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_to_War
| mindcrime wrote:
| On that note: if you read a lot of technology books and/or
| research papers and you pay attention to the "acknowledgements"
| section, you'll likely observe that it's _quite_ frequent to
| find something to this effect in there:
|
| "This research funded in part by a grant from the Naval
| Research Laboratory, grant number XXX-YYY-ZZZZZZZZZZ".
|
| This aside from similar notices mentioning DARPA, NSF, and
| other funding bodies.
| AlexDragusin wrote:
| Love the DHARMA Initiative feel of it!
|
| Excellent, particularly the differential computing aspect. Thanks
| for posting this.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| The US Navy's old training materials are fantastic for learning
| about various technologies.
|
| I think their masterpiece is "Basic Hand Tools" a handbook
| written in plain English that describes the use of practically
| every hand tool ever invented.
|
| "Basic Hand Tools" on the hammer:
|
| >Whoever conceived the idea of cracking a nut with a rock
| unknowingly invented a tool. When a later genius tied a stick to
| the rock, he invented the first hammer. There have been a lot of
| improvements since that humble beginning.
|
| The modern version "Tools and Their Uses" also covers machine
| tools but is less fun.
| smlavine wrote:
| Do you happen to have a link to the "Basic Hand Tools" version?
| parf02 wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/UseOfTools1945/mode/2up
| mrandish wrote:
| Thanks for posting the link. What a great book.
| _kb wrote:
| NEETS is another to add to the list. A quite literal full stack
| guide to electronics from the basis of matter up.
| bloopernova wrote:
| "Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series"
| copperx wrote:
| I found the "textbook", but is there a video series
| associated with it?
| mdorazio wrote:
| Not just military training videos, older ones in general are
| often superior to what gets made today. My favorite is probably
| this one on vehicle differentials:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Periscope Films uploads a lot of public domain US government
| material, and has it decently organized. The asbestos series
| is also interesting, hindsight being 20-20.
|
| See https://m.youtube.com/@PeriscopeFilm/playlists
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I like this even more.
|
| AT&T Archives: Similiarities of Wave Behavior
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DovunOxlY1k&pp=ygUOYmVsbCBsYWJ.
| ..
| halfnormalform wrote:
| Jam Handy films were amazing. You could show this to an
| audience who was morally opposed to learning about
| differentials and they'd still learn about differentials.
| mrandish wrote:
| I've never been a car guy. While I've heard of differentials,
| I never understood what it was. Thanks to you posting this
| video, I now understand what a differential does and how it
| does it.
|
| (I found playing it at 120% speed to be a good balance
| between comprehension and engagement)
| limit499karma wrote:
| I just downloaded (thanks to other commenter below) and would
| question the "use" part. What is the "peen" end used for?
| Having read the section on hammers I still don't know. (Just
| re-skimmed the section and I still don't know.)
| dcminter wrote:
| Hitting things ;)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peening
|
| I dimly recall making an ashtray (hmmm, not sure that would
| fly these days) in high school metalwork class by beating out
| a piece of copper sheet with the peen until it was suitably
| concave.
| billfor wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball-peen_hammer
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Is the original this one?
|
| https://archive.org/details/HandTools1944/page/n87/mode/2up
| zerohm wrote:
| I will never pass up an opportunity to use this joke:
|
| Everything is a hammer, unless it's a screwdriver. Then, it's a
| chisel.
| pmcf wrote:
| "The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution
| by idiots."
|
| - Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
|
| This is completely true. 18-20-year-old kids launch and arrest
| aircraft on a carrier while simultaneously performing an
| underway replenishment, and it's just another day.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| This made me think of engines as computers- the crank shaft
| connected to the timing belt goes up to the camshafts to
| instantly calculate the positions of the valves.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Likewise, an automatic transmission is a hydraulic computer.
| bluGill wrote:
| 50 years ago that was true. Sometime ago though (I don't know
| when, but I'd guess starting in the 1990s) they changed to
| electronic computers. Using electronics makes some things
| simpler and puts the complex parts in standard hardware (a
| CPU is much more complex but it isn't custom designed for
| you), or software (easy to change if you get it wrong.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| For the fuel injection and ignition (spark) timing yes, but
| the camshafts to open and close the valves are still driven
| by a gear, belt or chain. Even variable valve timing is
| mostly controled by mechanical or hydraulic means, though
| I'm guessing some electronics may be involved.
| xeonmc wrote:
| FreeValve
| bluGill wrote:
| This is about transmissions.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Upthread mentioned camshafts and valves, guess my reply
| is mostly to that.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Yeah, but the electronic control in 4 speeds was basically
| replicating the mechanical control of the previous
| generation. So it was more of an incremental improvement
| over old tech.
|
| Whereas modern 6+ speed transmissions are very different in
| design and control.
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is part of the reason why four speed autos stayed in use
| for so damn long. You can automatically shift a four speed
| transmission with a pair of solenoids that turn on/off based
| on the input values from a couple of basic sensors.
|
| The solenoids control which pair of clutches in the
| transmission engage, which in turn, determines the gear the
| transmission is in.
|
| Driveability wise, they were awful, and their overall
| efficiency was pretty bad. But the fact that it could
| automatically select the correct gear out of three or four
| with just one user input (throttle) is still marvelous.
|
| They could also handle insane amounts of power for the era.
| The GM 3L series came out in 1964 and was the transmission
| people would reach for when they were putting WWII era plane
| engines into crazy automobiles.
| a3n wrote:
| The speedometer on most cars is a kilometers - miles -
| kilometers calculator.
| neurobashing wrote:
| my head canon is that in the Dune universe, their response to the
| Butlerian Jihad was to develop better and better mechanical
| computers; specifically, via miniaturization, down to the
| nanometer level. It doesn't quite work for everything (Holtzmann
| shields are entirely analog?) but it works well enough to map
| most objects to a viable analog controller made of nanometer-
| scale analog computers.
| avar wrote:
| The ban on thinking machines in Dune has nothing to do with the
| mechanics by which those machines work.
|
| For all we know (I'm ignoring Brian Herbert's fanfiction here)
| the predominant type of computing at the time was mechanical.
| In any case, it wouldn't have mattered.
| pmcf wrote:
| In 1989 I was a data systems tech on a Destroyer going through
| some overhaul at the shipyard in Pascagoula Mississippi. Moored
| right next to us was the battleship Wisconsin. Huge relic from
| WW2 but still going through modernization. A bunch of us that
| worked on combat systems got invited for a tour of their fire
| control systems.
|
| Wow. Just wow. All mechanical computers calculating fire control
| solutions for the big 16 inch guns. The guys giving the tour were
| well beyond the age for regular military retirement. Come to find
| out, they were all reactivated because practical knowledge of the
| mechanical computers had since left the navy. That was a very
| cool day.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| I remember seeing one of those computers on Wisconsin, but I
| only saw it after decommission, as a museum piece. Those
| computers are truly mind boggling, if you're reading this and
| you're close to Norfolk you should visit battleship Wisconsin.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| same goes for being in SoCal and going to visit the USS Iowa
| in San Pedro. it also has similar mechanical computers, it's
| a fantastic day spent clambering around the ship. sometimes
| they do "stay overnight in the bunks" nights, I can highly
| recommend it!
| teqsun wrote:
| For anyone along the Northeastern corridor, the USS New
| Jersey in Camden is another well-preserved Iowa class
| museum ship.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The Battleship New Jersey has a good youtube channel
| where the head curator walks you through some things.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@BattleshipNewJersey
|
| They also sell broken parts of the ship that they fix up
| as souvenirs, like the entire deck's worth of wooden
| planking, and for $1000 you can take a tour where the
| mildly charismatic head curator takes you into the
| smallest and hardest to reach parts of the ship!
|
| Or fire a 5 inch gun, you know, if that's more your
| speed.
| jabl wrote:
| > Or fire a 5 inch gun, you know, if that's more your
| speed.
|
| Depends on what the target is.
| teqsun wrote:
| For $1k it's just a blank round.
|
| But if you donate $1M, you're allowed to shoot the USS
| New Jersey's curator Jordan with an HE shell from the 16"
| guns.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| If you watch the channel you'd know it was HC - high
| capacity.
| Loughla wrote:
| My uncle was on the Wisconsin and operated the big guns during
| the first Gulf war.
|
| I never really had context as a kid for how large that ship is,
| and was just astounded by the distances they would shell.
| pmcf wrote:
| This was right before the gulf war so I may have met him!
| Assuming he was a gunners mate, that crew had a lot of
| moments of touching history. Besides mechanical computers,
| it's a really dangerous place since they had to handle
| massive bags of flash powder.
|
| My ship was near the USS Iowa when turret two went up. A
| sobering experience when you think how much risk the turret
| crews are in just by doing their jobs.
| teachrdan wrote:
| For those like me who didn't get this reference:
|
| "On 19 April 1989, an explosion occurred within the Number
| Two 16-inch gun turret of the United States Navy battleship
| USS Iowa (BB-61) during a fleet exercise in the Caribbean
| Sea near Puerto Rico.[1] The explosion in the center gun
| room killed 47 of the turret's crewmen and severely damaged
| the gun turret itself."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion
| cwillu wrote:
| Apropos: https://www.navalgazing.net/Fire-Control-Part-1
| retrac wrote:
| By the end of WW II American torpedoes were automatically
| programmed (direction, speed, fusing) before firing. The heavy
| calculations would be done by the shipboard firing computer
| while the parameters set would be used by the simple computer
| on the torpedo (which had inertial guidance). I struggle to
| imagine how people managed to design such things with just
| pencils and slide rules.
| nradov wrote:
| WW II American torpedoes didn't have inertial guidance. They
| used gyros for directional control and just ran in a straight
| line after making a single turn onto the set course.
| Occasionally the torpedo would get stuck in that turn and run
| in a circle. Towards the end of the war the Navy also started
| introducing homing torpedoes, but those didn't use inertial
| guidance either.
| pocketstar wrote:
| A gyro by definition IS inertial guidance.
| nradov wrote:
| Not really. By definition an inertial guidance or
| navigation system has to do some sort of integration of
| inputs over time. Gyroscopes are typically used as part
| of inertial guidance systems, but connecting a gyro
| output directly to a rudder input wouldn't by itself be
| considered as inertial guidance. The device wasn't doing
| anything to calculate absolute position based on inertia.
| ploxiln wrote:
| > Occasionally the torpedo would get stuck in that turn and
| run in a circle.
|
| Well that's not a great failure mode, if it can come right
| back at vessel which launched it ... imagine trying to
| implement a self-destruct failsafe with that tech back then
| ...
| nradov wrote:
| At least two US Navy submarines were sunk by their own
| torpedoes making circular runs. The main failsafe
| mechanism disabled the detonators until the weapon had
| run out a certain minimum distance but obviously that
| wasn't effective in circular runs.
|
| https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-
| magazine/2011/j...
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Not exclusive to the US though, check out the
| "Torpedovorhalterechner" ;)
|
| http://www.tvre.org/en/torpedo-fire-control-system-on-
| german...
|
| Scrolling down there's a nice photo with removed cover.
| grumpyprole wrote:
| Yes, in fact even a Harrier Jump Jet was designed with
| pencils and a slide rule!
| nine_k wrote:
| I.suspect they used tabulators and other such mechanical
| calculation devices, with a higher precision and faster
| speed than a slide rule.
| zerohm wrote:
| I had a co-worker at the Navy Yard that said he was an Anti-
| Aircraft tech during the Korean War. When he said they used
| 'mechanical computers' I had to stair up into space for a
| minute to figure out what that meant.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| In 1981 I was just out of high school and had a summer job at
| NUWES - Navel Undersea Warfare and Engineering Station in
| Keyport, WA. I was in a group that was refurb'ing fire control
| computers from submarines. They kind of looked like those stand
| up video game consoles that became popular in arcades soon
| after - except these cabinets were made of solid aluminum. They
| were full of gears and resolvers - analog computers. The
| "display" was all analog. And they were all being replaced with
| new gears and resolvers. I recall that there was another group
| nearby that was experimenting with microcomputers - they had
| some S-100 boxes like IMSAI 8080s.
| PKop wrote:
| "Obviously, computer accuracy depends on the quality of the
| information it receives".
|
| So true.
| ape4 wrote:
| Low quality received, poor accuracy out.
| gausswho wrote:
| Made me look up the origin of 'garbage in garbage out.
| Interesting that GIGO descends from LIFO and FIFO.
| gausswho wrote:
| More info: https://wordhistories.net/2022/12/05/garbage-in-
| garbage-out/
| renox wrote:
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-what-eat-gigo-gastao-
| de-f...
| lukan wrote:
| Why not do some math to fix it?
|
| https://xkcd.com/2494/
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| That made me think of a quote from Charles Babbage, arguably
| the inventor of the mechanical computer. I wonder if it was
| added intentionally as a reference:
|
| > _On two occasions I have been asked, -- "Pray, Mr. Babbage,
| if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
| answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in
| the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am
| not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
| that could provoke such a question._
|
| - Charles Babbage in _Passages from the Life of a Philosopher_
| (1864)
| andrei-akopian wrote:
| Modern educational videos/films feel lower quality (in terms of
| content) even with all the modern tech at their disposal.
|
| Better technology doesn't seem to improve education. The quality
| of the content is 99% the skill of the teacher.
| meroes wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like if we had a video like this for every
| concept we'd be in Star Trek utopia by now.
| g8oz wrote:
| Domain experts and instructional designers working together, in
| close proximity, in both time and space, produce the best
| educational content in my opinion. Without iteration and
| feedback loops between these groups we end up with the shallow
| content that is so prevalent in the e-learning industry.
| mncharity wrote:
| > Domain experts and instructional designers working
| together, in close proximity
|
| I dream of an online community encompassing science
| researchers, instructional designers and education
| researchers, software developers, and teachers. So "my
| students are struggling with" -> "the underlying idea is" ->
| "maybe represent that as" -> "here's a strawman web
| interactive" -> "tried it this afternoon, mostly worked,
| except for" in tight iterative churns.
| hnpolicestate wrote:
| Agreed. Check out all the popular historical war documentaries
| on YouTube. They are labeled "simplified, learn in 10 minutes
| etc", also use childlike cartoons. Never any interviews with
| real world experts.
|
| It's almost like the concept of making technology easy enough
| for a child to use has spread to other areas.
| duxup wrote:
| There used to be a real art to make informational videos like
| this.
|
| Here is one on punchard machines:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etu-cH-nkIA
|
| Now a days we just deploy tech all YOLO style.
| poikroequ wrote:
| Great video! I love the simple straightforward presentation, it
| explains the concepts so well. The many applications of cams
| continue to impresses me.
|
| The fundamentals of mechanical computers go back much further,
| well into the 1800s and possibly even earlier. Much of it has its
| roots in clockwork.
| mrandish wrote:
| > it explains the concepts so well.
|
| Indeed. Watching the video I found the practical and visual
| illustration of math concepts when implemented in mechanical
| gears to feel intuitive in a way I never felt from chalkboard
| math instruction. As a person who's always struggled with
| traditional algebra and up math education, seeing it presented
| in this physical way really felt fundamentally more accessible
| to me. Like I strangely felt far more 'connected' to concepts
| in a way I never have before. Has anyone ever tried to teach
| algebra and higher level math concepts this way?
|
| I suspect if back in high school and college, math classes had
| geared machines I could touch and turn a crank on to see the
| "math work", maybe my life would have been different. I
| basically dropped out of college due to falling behind in high
| school on algebra fundamentals and never being able to catch up
| in college. When I found I loved computers in the college's
| BASIC 101 class, yet found any access to computers beyond that
| class requiring a transfer to the math dept (this being the
| early 80s), and not being able to pass the prereq classes for
| that transfer, I dropped out. Strangely, I immediately bought
| an 8-bit computer with 4K of RAM and became an entirely self-
| taught programmer (which ended up working out very well for me
| in the end), but what might have been...
| tingletech wrote:
| When my great grandfather was drafted in WWI from the chemistry
| department at Berkeley to Annapolis, they put him on a ship as an
| ensign doing targeting.
| varenc wrote:
| Can anyone find parts 2-4? This seems to just be part of 1!
| flohofwoe wrote:
| To get a direct feel of how it is working with such a 'computer':
| the UBOAT game on Steam (spiritual successor to the Silent Hunter
| games) has somewhat recently added a Torpedo Data Computer as
| used on German Type VII submarines:
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/494840/view/37127138...
|
| The user interface is surprisingly intuitive even by today's UX
| standards.
| foofoo4u wrote:
| I wish I grew up with educational videos like these. Simple, to
| the point, foundational videos that teach complicated topics from
| building blocks. I love the practical demonstrations. If I saw
| these as a child, I would have certainly considered majoring in
| engineering.
| johnohara wrote:
| Can't have a military training film or newsreel without march
| cadence intro music. It inherently tells you to "sit still, pay
| attention, and listen." This means you!
|
| Bagpipes are the same thing. Nowadays, nothing seems official
| unless it starts or ends with bagpipes.
| maxglute wrote:
| The videos on WW2 bomber gun system and bombing computer are also
| very fun.
|
| Too lazy to find specific videos, but this entire channel is A+
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@WWIIUSBombers/search?query=computer
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Mechanical Computer - Basic Mechanisms in Fire Control
| Computers (1953) [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29471331 - Dec 2021 (12
| comments)
|
| _Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers (1953) [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7831923 - June 2014 (6
| comments)
| turtledragonfly wrote:
| I especially like the section on differential gears,
| demonstrating their use as computing units: (timestamped link)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwf5mAlI7Ug&t=771s
| geogod42 wrote:
| someone should build a very precise "lut" with mems and this
| tech. would be pretty hard tho
| mftrhu wrote:
| People might also be interested in this 1944's Bureau of
| Ordnance's 433-pages pamphlet: _Basic Fire Control Mechanisms_
| <https://maritime.org/doc/op1140/index.php> (PDF).
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