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I once read or heard a similar anecdote about Ludwig Prandtl who set up computation method using a room full of people each doing one step of a calculation. I r
by hydrogen7800 4y ago
I once read or heard a similar anecdote about Ludwig Prandtl who set up computation method using a room full of people each doing one step of a calculation. I recall it describing a finite element method, but that would predate the origin of FEM in this article by a few decades. Maybe it was just some numerical method.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoI assume it would be a finite differences calculation, which is also very easy to parallelize/vectorize. They solve the same class of problems, but calculations with finite differences don't always converge the way that finite elements do.
- marmetio 4y agoThat's correct, it was finite difference methods. There are many variations with different properties such as whether they'll definitely converge or not.
- perilunar 4y agoHuh? Theres's a long history of doing this — 'computers' were people long before they are machines.
- adrian_b 4y agoYes, indeed. My father's first job was as a "computer" at an astronomical observatory (in the fifties of the 20th century, when vacuum tube computers had just started to appear, but they had astronomical prices, so they were out of reach for an astronomical observatory).
- hydrogen7800 4y agoI'm aware of human "computers" but my recollection was that in the case of Prandtl, it was an application FEM. I did not know FEM wasn't developed at that time, as this article shows, so it must have been something else.
- adrian_b 4y agoAs a poster above has already said, it might have been a finite difference method, because they solve the same problems. Unlike FEM, finite difference methods have been used right since the origins of differential and integral calculus, with Newton and Leibniz. There are also precursors of the modern FEM, like the Ritz or Galerkin methods, which could have been used by Prandtl.