21–30 of 78 posts
In the 1980s people in chemistry labs that needed to find the area beneath a curve used to print/plot the curve, cut out the area and weigh it. This worked quite well as they had accurate scales.
Ha! Very interesting. And the density of paper was uniform enough? Or maybe they used a different material?
In the 1980s people in chemistry labs that needed to find the area beneath a curve used to print/plot the curve, cut out the area and weigh it. This worked quite well as they had accurate scales.
There's a little more info in this (somewhat wonderful) article: https://pruned.blogspot.com/2012/01/gardens-as-crypto-water-...
I wonder how did they deal with thermal expansion. Maybe instead of using water at room temp they heated it to something higher and then a thermostat took care of it? But it still would be very hard to distribute heat evenly.
In a related vein, Ars Technica writer Sean Gallagher did a fantastic story on the US Navy's analog fire guidance computers a few years ago: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/gears... The instruction videos alone are worth the visit. Geekery of the first order.
I was mulling the comment here a few days ago pointing out Heinlein's prescient depiction of networked computers, and thinking that the hard part would be having mechanical computers pick up the phone and sending electromagnetic pulses down the line. Perhaps pecking at telegraph keys ...
This rather reminds me of the economic model in Terry Pratchett's "Making Money".
Wonder if they had cross-core security vulnerabilities?