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In the intro to this video he mentions analogue computers predicting tides. His video before this one[1] goes into detail on that, and it was incredible. In th
by jodrellblank 5y ago
In the intro to this video he mentions analogue computers predicting tides. His video before this one[1] goes into detail on that, and it was incredible.
In the 1800s, Lord Kelvin spent years working on tidal rise and fall patterns, applying Fourier Transforms to break them down into ten individual sine waves, then combining those sine waves back together to predict future tides. And built analog computers to do all the involved integration, multiplying and summing. It's a part of the history of computing I'd never heard of, despite hearing quite a lot about the dawn of electro-mechanical computers in the early 1900s.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgF3OX8nT0w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgF3OX8nT0w
- ggm 5y agoThe machines (or later derivatives) is in the science museum. One variant uses cones, I imagine they provide for a huge amount of variance of the parameters of the fourier transform, another is pulleys, but changing out a pulley is a lot more work than moving where two cones are co-incident rubbing to transfer motion. Along with a meccano numerical analyser, and bits of babbage's original work