4 ms·

>In analog computers there are no algorithms, no loops, nothing as they know it. Instead there are a couple of basic, yet powerful computing elements that have

>In analog computers there are no algorithms, no loops, nothing as they know it. Instead there are a couple of basic, yet powerful computing elements that have to be interconnected cleverly in order to set up an electronic analog of some mathematically described problem. This is exactly why the digital computer has won over the analog computer.

dom0 9y ago
Uhm, no. Analogue vs. digital computers use fundamentally different kinds of computation. Analogue computers were not used for "programming", nor was it really necessary for the simulations done on them. Essentially, with an analogue computer you have a rack full of analogue building blocks and you build an electronic system equivalent to your real-world system from them. Then you can apply inputs and observe outputs. Often, the inputs were connected to sensors in a device, and the outputs were connected to actuators or recorders. When analogue computers were already in wide use, there were maybe three digital computers on the whole planet. Later still, in the 60s to perhaps the early 80s "analogue computers" could (to varying degrees) perform some simulations orders of magnitude faster than contemporary digital computers. Only when digital computers became fast, cheap and easy enough to do these they became a replacement, however, moving from an analogue computer to a digital program could be quite difficult, since the two operate in vastly different ways. Large systems often used digital computers since the ~70s for e.g. recording and analyzing outputs: a company in my home town developed test rigs for performance and crash testing of cars (and also did the testing to some extent); they still had a massive hybrid computer in the 80s (multiple analogue racks plus I think two DG Nova systems).

4 ms·

>In analog computers there are no algorithms, no loops, nothing as they know it. Instead there are a couple of basic, yet powerful computing elements that have

by ankurdhama 9y ago

dom0 9y ago
Uhm, no. Analogue vs. digital computers use fundamentally different kinds of computation. Analogue computers were not used for "programming", nor was it really necessary for the simulations done on them. Essentially, with an analogue computer you have a rack full of analogue building blocks and you build an electronic system equivalent to your real-world system from them. Then you can apply inputs and observe outputs. Often, the inputs were connected to sensors in a device, and the outputs were connected to actuators or recorders. When analogue computers were already in wide use, there were maybe three digital computers on the whole planet. Later still, in the 60s to perhaps the early 80s "analogue computers" could (to varying degrees) perform some simulations orders of magnitude faster than contemporary digital computers. Only when digital computers became fast, cheap and easy enough to do these they became a replacement, however, moving from an analogue computer to a digital program could be quite difficult, since the two operate in vastly different ways. Large systems often used digital computers since the ~70s for e.g. recording and analyzing outputs: a company in my home town developed test rigs for performance and crash testing of cars (and also did the testing to some extent); they still had a massive hybrid computer in the 80s (multiple analogue racks plus I think two DG Nova systems).