6 ms·

Wheatstone System

44 points by vermilingua 7y ago

Razengan 7y ago
I would have loved for us to have at least one era of widespread mechanical computing. The World Wars jolted and sped us up too much to have some steampunk. :(
- MisterTea 7y ago
  You'll just have to stimulate your babbage GPU with klax display.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  The cat whisker radio was invented in 1906, 10-years prior to WW1, which is what eventually led to the transistor-revolution. It took a few decades before people used non-linear electronics to create negative-feedback circuits (leading to modern electrical circuits), but the groundwork to discover modern electronics as really all ready before WW1. Apparently, the the vacuum tube diode was 1904. Not yet an amplifier, but the age of electronics is nigh. True, the 1940s made amplifiers cheaper with semiconductor circuits, but everything you do with semiconductors you could do with vacuum tubes (albeit at much higher prices, more waste-electricty, and lower reliability). ------ WW1 did speed things up a bit. Light-cavalry messengers were still deployed in WW1 despite the invention of cars and radios... the war made it obvious that light-cavalry was finally obsolete. Horse-based transport required ~30% of all deliveries to be horsefeed, while oil delivered by trucks is far more efficient. Horses require a period of training: where the riders and the horses learn to work together... if a horse (or rider) died, it would be months before a new rider would be proficient and back to delivering messages.
- ghaff 7y ago
  You sort of did although they never really scaled up to full sized computers. You had Marchant calculators going back to WWI era and variations were still in use until the 1970s or so. You also had fire control systems around WWII that were mechanical computers. I suspect that bigger devices were always going to be electro-mechanical given that the basic component technology was fairly well established.
- lb1lf 7y ago
  There are (were!) some pretty nifty mechanical computers out there. If you can spare the time, this 2014 Ars Technica story on USN fire guidance computers is engineering porn of the first degree: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/gears-of-war-when-mechanical-analog-computers-ruled-the-waves/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/gears...
robotmay 7y ago
Charles Wheatstone was an interesting character. Obviously an extremely intelligent person, but it's a little unclear how many things he directly invented and how many were from his employees. The wide variety of his inventions is quite interesting, and the three I can think of off the top of my head; telegraph machines, railway points, the English concertina; are pretty diverse! My knowledge is more in the concertina area of that, where I believe that Louis Lachenal is actually the source of a lot of the developments at Wheatstone before he left and set up a competing company (Lachenal). Sources are hard/impossible to come by on the internet for that, as most of the people who are experts in this are rather old by this point. I suspect that CW was a bit of a serial inventor whose attention wasn't held for long :) FWIW I have a 1930 Wheatstone Maccann Duet concertina that I play regularly, and it is rather beautifully made. EDIT: I was sure he was involved in the invention of railway point systems but I now can't find any references, annoyingly.
- salty_biscuits 7y ago
  The most famous thing I know about that is named after him is the Wheatstone Bridge, which was invented by Samuel Hunter Christie...
jbattle 7y ago
Seems like it would have been easier to just take the paper tape and punch either circles (dots) or ovals (dashes) and have conductors pushed up against the tape. Whenever the conductors touch (through cut-out gaps in the paper), they transmit tone. No need for compound levers, just some springs. And a mechanism to pull the paper at a fixed rate
sgt101 7y ago
Charles Wheatstone entered into a joint partnership with William Cooke and this led to the foundation of the English Telegraph Company which eventually became the GPO. The money he got was used to fund Ada Lovelace (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_pr...) to translate the notes on Babbage's lectures into English and to create the notes that included the first computer program. Subsequently the GPO funded the development of the Colossus computer by Tommy Flowers according to the work of Max Newman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers#World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers#World_War_II)
- tingletech 7y ago
  What is the GPO. Not the US Government Printing Office I presume. Not the British General Post Office, as that seems to have been founded before the telegraph? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office
  - sgt101 7y ago
    The british one! It was founded for letters, but subsumed the private telegraph companies and telephony as it evolved.

44 points by vermilingua 7y ago

I would have loved for us to have at least one era of widespread mechanical computing. The World Wars jolted and sped us up too much to have some steampunk. :(

MisterTea 7y ago
You'll just have to stimulate your babbage GPU with klax display.
dragontamer 7y ago
The cat whisker radio was invented in 1906, 10-years prior to WW1, which is what eventually led to the transistor-revolution. It took a few decades before people used non-linear electronics to create negative-feedback circuits (leading to modern electrical circuits), but the groundwork to discover modern electronics as really all ready before WW1. Apparently, the the vacuum tube diode was 1904. Not yet an amplifier, but the age of electronics is nigh. True, the 1940s made amplifiers cheaper with semiconductor circuits, but everything you do with semiconductors you could do with vacuum tubes (albeit at much higher prices, more waste-electricty, and lower reliability). ------ WW1 did speed things up a bit. Light-cavalry messengers were still deployed in WW1 despite the invention of cars and radios... the war made it obvious that light-cavalry was finally obsolete. Horse-based transport required ~30% of all deliveries to be horsefeed, while oil delivered by trucks is far more efficient. Horses require a period of training: where the riders and the horses learn to work together... if a horse (or rider) died, it would be months before a new rider would be proficient and back to delivering messages.
ghaff 7y ago
You sort of did although they never really scaled up to full sized computers. You had Marchant calculators going back to WWI era and variations were still in use until the 1970s or so. You also had fire control systems around WWII that were mechanical computers. I suspect that bigger devices were always going to be electro-mechanical given that the basic component technology was fairly well established.
lb1lf 7y ago
There are (were!) some pretty nifty mechanical computers out there. If you can spare the time, this 2014 Ars Technica story on USN fire guidance computers is engineering porn of the first degree: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/gears-of-war-when-mechanical-analog-computers-ruled-the-waves/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/gears...

robotmay 7y ago

Charles Wheatstone was an interesting character. Obviously an extremely intelligent person, but it's a little unclear how many things he directly invented and how many were from his employees. The wide variety of his inventions is quite interesting, and the three I can think of off the top of my head; telegraph machines, railway points, the English concertina; are pretty diverse! My knowledge is more in the concertina area of that, where I believe that Louis Lachenal is actually the source of a lot of the developments at Wheatstone before he left and set up a competing company (Lachenal). Sources are hard/impossible to come by on the internet for that, as most of the people who are experts in this are rather old by this point. I suspect that CW was a bit of a serial inventor whose attention wasn't held for long :) FWIW I have a 1930 Wheatstone Maccann Duet concertina that I play regularly, and it is rather beautifully made. EDIT: I was sure he was involved in the invention of railway point systems but I now can't find any references, annoyingly.

salty_biscuits 7y ago
The most famous thing I know about that is named after him is the Wheatstone Bridge, which was invented by Samuel Hunter Christie...

jbattle 7y ago

Seems like it would have been easier to just take the paper tape and punch either circles (dots) or ovals (dashes) and have conductors pushed up against the tape. Whenever the conductors touch (through cut-out gaps in the paper), they transmit tone. No need for compound levers, just some springs. And a mechanism to pull the paper at a fixed rate

sgt101 7y ago

Charles Wheatstone entered into a joint partnership with William Cooke and this led to the foundation of the English Telegraph Company which eventually became the GPO. The money he got was used to fund Ada Lovelace (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_pr...) to translate the notes on Babbage's lectures into English and to create the notes that included the first computer program. Subsequently the GPO funded the development of the Colossus computer by Tommy Flowers according to the work of Max Newman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers#World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers#World_War_II)

tingletech 7y ago
What is the GPO. Not the US Government Printing Office I presume. Not the British General Post Office, as that seems to have been founded before the telegraph? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office
- sgt101 7y ago
  The british one! It was founded for letters, but subsumed the private telegraph companies and telephony as it evolved.