About 8 years ago I visited TU Chemnitz and they had a lab making similar things to this. It wasn't clear to me what the goal was, but it was very cool nonetheless.
Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
#12I've always wanted to build (distinct) mechanical computers out of the following kinds of elements: 1. Spur-gear differential; and, 2. Shishi-odoshi. Both of these are saturating mechanical devices that can be used to build NAND gates; the latter, I think, would be very pleasing, if exceedingly slow. For the spur-gear differential, you'd need to up-scale the output by a factor of 2 (since the output is half-speed), a…
A shishi-odoshi ALU would be amazing to see…and hear too. I love that idea.
I wanna run my neural net on shishi-odoshi.
Re: Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has any computer been built out of spur-gear differentials? Like maybe some sort of adder circuit, not necessarily a full instruction executing computer. The only uses I could find was what seems to me like the differentials being part of some sort of analogue computer.
Spur gear differentials are naturally adders (with carry!); so, traditionally they've only ever been used for analogue logic. They're overly complicated for digital logic: you need two spur gears to build a single gate (NAND) to perform a single binary operation. If you want any sort of reasonable lash characteristics you're going to need ~60 teeth. At that point, two 60 teeth spur gears give you a 3600-valued adder.…
> a 1100 hp motor to run it
Oh, ye that sounds impractical. A really big truck engine more or less.
Re: Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has any computer been built out of spur-gear differentials? Like maybe some sort of adder circuit, not necessarily a full instruction executing computer. The only uses I could find was what seems to me like the differentials being part of some sort of analogue computer.
Spur gear differentials are naturally adders (with carry!); so, traditionally they've only ever been used for analogue logic. They're overly complicated for digital logic: you need two spur gears to build a single gate (NAND) to perform a single binary operation. If you want any sort of reasonable lash characteristics you're going to need ~60 teeth. At that point, two 60 teeth spur gears give you a 3600-valued adder.…
A huge steam engine might be the ticket, that'll solve your starting torque problem
Re: Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
#15Is anyone going to produce a proof-of-concept Analytical Engine?
Will robots (which will hopefully soon be available) be able to do it?
Re: Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
#16This brings to mind two stories: Exhalation by Ted Chiang (short story), and the Three Body Problem (specifically the human computer) by Cixin Liu (novel length).
Exhalation really gets me thinking about what it means to be sentient & self-aware. If the neurons in our brains could, even in theory, be simulated by logic gates then, equally in theory, a Turing machine could be sentient. I can even imagine a bunch of rocks being sentient: https://xkcd.com/505/
Re: Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
#17I've always wanted to build (distinct) mechanical computers out of the following kinds of elements: 1. Spur-gear differential; and, 2. Shishi-odoshi. Both of these are saturating mechanical devices that can be used to build NAND gates; the latter, I think, would be very pleasing, if exceedingly slow. For the spur-gear differential, you'd need to up-scale the output by a factor of 2 (since the output is half-speed), a…
I built some logic gates using water and a 3D printed "seesaw" that tilts to the left or right: https://byronknoll.blogspot.com/2022/06/water-computer.html
Beautiful! Thank you!
Re: Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spur gear differentials are naturally adders (with carry!); so, traditionally they've only ever been used for analogue logic. They're overly complicated for digital logic: you need two spur gears to build a single gate (NAND) to perform a single binary operation. If you want any sort of reasonable lash characteristics you're going to need ~60 teeth. At that point, two 60 teeth spur gears give you a 3600-valued adder.…
> a 1100 hp motor to run it Oh, ye that sounds impractical. A really big truck engine more or less.
Convincing Mrs. thechao that we needed to drop 80000$ on a blown V8 to build a 4b 3 function calculator didn't workout, BTW.
Re: Millihertz 5 Mechanical Computer (2022)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a 1100 hp motor to run it Oh, ye that sounds impractical. A really big truck engine more or less.
Convincing Mrs. thechao that we needed to drop 80000$ on a blown V8 to build a 4b 3 function calculator didn't workout, BTW.
Well I want to be on your side but I think one need to keep the dreams not within grasp but at least in sight.