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People forget that prior to electronic computers we had mechanical computers: abacus, slide rules and other devices. Slide rules go back all the way to the 17t
by 29athrowaway 6y ago
People forget that prior to electronic computers we had mechanical computers: abacus, slide rules and other devices.
Slide rules go back all the way to the 17th century, and the abacus goes back thousands of years.
Romans engineers, for example, were known to carry portable hand abaci.
- agumonkey 6y agoSlide rules are actually my favorite thing.. two pieces of wood to leverage logarithmic relationships (quite abstract IMO) and compute faster. Just through gradual marks and a few concepts.
- jonsen 6y agoI’m with you on “just” for “a few concepts”, but not for the marking: Slide Rule for the Modern Day: https://www.instructables.com/Slide-Rule-for-the-Modern-Day/ https://www.instructables.com/Slide-Rule-for-the-Modern-Day/ I mean, the “knowledge” of where the marks go is not the same as the “know-how” required to put them there ;-)
- agumonkey 6y agoAlright it's indeed subtler than expected. Still a seemingly looking thing that is actually packed with mathematics. The point was a bit that sophistication doesn't come from the underlying technology.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoWhat I like about slide rules is that they're not a black box. You can see it and manipulate as a physical object and you can develop an intuition around it.
- amatic 6y agoGreeks had a mechanical cube-root finder. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3615516?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3615516?seq=1 (btw. are scihub links allowed on HN?)
- amatic 6y agoA 1979 article on ancient catapults, includes the description of the cube-root finding device: http://jaanmarss.planet.ee/juhendid/Kaugrelvad_Antiik-Kreekas/andmebaas/W.Soedel_and_V.Foley/Catapults.htm http://jaanmarss.planet.ee/juhendid/Kaugrelvad_Antiik-Kreeka...
- konjin 6y agoYou can easily use any checkered board as a binary calculator. I'm quite convinced that all the games like chess started life as things to do on your calculator when you were bored.