On 11/26/2017 10:57 PM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
If a smart phone was full of tubes and associated 50's era components instead of today's smaller components the phone would have to be the size of Camp Evans.
Likely larger.
The MIT machine we have in the museum display is not anything like a cell phone however it's an analog computer sort of. Its more actually a bunch of Philco analog rack units that would have been part of a larger system plus a plotter and instruments generating "input". I have materials at my house that explain some of the rack components I promise next time I come up I'll try to put something together to explain what the MIT computer likely would have done. Also, as they are now the rack components are in a disorganized impractical configuration. We need to put them together into a more likely configuration asap. That would be a good thing to do next workshop. The process of researching the components will help expose it's function and help docents explain it.
If I'm not mistaken, that system is every bit a full-blown analog computer, by any reasonable definition. Remember, one can make a circuit that qualifies for that name with a few variable resistors, an op-amp, and a meter. Most every analog computer consists of a random bunch of separate circuits, usually multiple copies of each, and for the truly modular ones the number of each were specified at the time of purchase. If a scientist was working on a budget and he knew that most of his work could be completed on an analog machine with eight op-amps, he/she'd order the machine with eight op-amps. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA