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In Reply to: RE: -75 dB posted by Tony Lauck on June 26, 2014 at 08:11:40
At this late date, I don't know if it was Analogue or Digital but I once visited the Sinclair (petroleum) research labs outside of Chicago. A friend of my dads was a chemist in the hi pressure lab and had some missing digits to prove it.
The computer in question was a vacuum tube model with a huge plugboard as in the EAI brochure.
One of the brain guys my dad knew had written a great circle navigation program for this machine. And it worked! Somewhere in my 'stuff' I may still have the 1/4 MILE of punch tape of the program. Only later (mid/late 70s) could you get a great circle navigation program for the then wacky revolutionary HP handhelds.
I don't know how much floor space the computer took up, but the AC system EASILY was enough for a small apartment building!
The provided link shows a video of a WORKING 'Difference Engine #2' designed but NEVER completed by Charles Babbage. I believe the Vid shows the machine built by the Smithsonian to the original plans. One intent was to make a CORRECT trig table for navigation. Up to that time trig tables were hand copied and computed. Lots of errors crept in which made for problems, as you can imagine. Babbage ALSO designed a printer which I don't think has been built to this day.
An early, but certainly NOT the earliest analogue computer.
Too much is never enough
Follow Ups:
There are two Difference Engines in existence.
Both were built by the London Science Museum. One is still there and the other, the one in the video linked, is owned by Nathan Myrhvold and on loan to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
What happened to the one built by the Smithsonian? That's where I first read about it….and they were in process of building it and trying to find the money to build the PRINTER to go with it.
Do I mis-remember?
Too much is never enough
The two engines were built by the London Science Museum in '89-'91 for Babbages 200th birthday and in '00 they also built the printer.
The Smithsonian may have one of the engines based on the Babbage design and built by the swedish lawyer and inventor Per Georg Scheutz and his son Edvard. They sold one to the US gov in 1860. I can't find anything that may indicate that the Smithsonian ever built one for themselves.
Must be that pesky brain cell again.
Too much is never enough
I think a lot of the nonsense about directionality comes from cables (Monster comes to mind) with direction arrows on them. It has nothing to do with signal flow, but everything to do with good shielding practice. There's a rule that says signal current should never flow in shields. The usual practice is to use 2-conductor shielded cable, and only connect the shield at one end. The usual end to connect the shield is at the driven end because that's usually the quieter ground. Thus, they put an arrow on the cable that points to where the load should be connected. You can plug them in either way and they'll sound exactly the same, though possibly noise will be a tad higher or lower one way or the other.
FWIW, I can't hear the difference between interconnects. Did a test some weeks ago on the matter here-
Geoff:
wanna let me scramble your cables and randomly reconnect or NOT? You than come into the room and listen. Tell me what is or isn't different.
We can do this 3 or 4 times, but 20 would be statistically valid. Let me know when I can drop by and we can begin testing your hypothesis.
Too much is never enough
Unfortunately your little experiment would prove absolutely nothing. A much better experiment is take an unshielded pair of interconnects and reverse their direction. Which direction sounds best? Or even easier for the uber skeptics among us just flip a stock fuse. It's not rocket science.
Edits: 01/31/16 01/31/16
I can hear directionality in interconnects VERY clearly. One direction relatively sucks. Same with fuses. Didn't you get the memo? All wires are directional, in the audible sense. Maybe you are "insensitive" to directionality. Lol
Darn, that memo was obviously sent through a cable in the "wrong" direction, so it never arrived here, or perhaps it arrived before it was sent and I missed it ;-)
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