3 ms·

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...

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...