Quotulatiousness

March 5, 2016

Mechanical computers

Filed under: History, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

ESR posted this video on Google+, saying “Mind…utterly…blown. This is how computers worked before electronic gate logic. There’s a weird beauty of mathematics made tangible about it.”

Uploaded on 13 Jul 2011

A 1953 training film for a mechanical fire control computer aboard Navy Ships. Amazing how problems of mathematical computation were solved so elegantly in “permanent” mechanical form, before microprocessors became inexpensive and commonplace.

3 Comments

  1. Wow, that was very interesting

    Comment by Clive Tonge — March 5, 2016 @ 12:06

  2. I had the privilege of working on slightly more upgraded fire control systems in the navy from 1979 – 1988. The systems were very ingenious, I would have liked to have met some of the folks who thought this stuff up.

    Comment by Dwayne — March 7, 2016 @ 14:26

  3. Was this on one of the USN’s re-activated battleships? I’d have thought more modern ships would have electronic fire control pretty much across the board by 1979.

    Comment by Nicholas — March 9, 2016 @ 08:49

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