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> All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets. Well they did have radios, telephones and radar as well. The fire control systems o

> All that with slide rules, typewriters, mimeographs, and filing cabinets. Well they did have radios, telephones and radar as well. The fire control systems of battleships and anti-aircraft guns led to massive advances in distributed analogue computing that provided early insights into human/machine interactions as well as the beginnings of system-level architecting. The Brits during the Battle of Britain exploited telephone networks and switchboards in innovative ways to create a highly fault (bomb) tolerant decentralised command and control system that formed an early version of the sensor-to-shooter kill chains we see today.

bloopernova 2y ago
If you've not read Most Secret War I highly recommend it. Dr R V Jones details some of the different systems involved in the Battle of Britain and it's a great book too.
- KineticLensman 2y ago
  I read 'The Secret War' by Brian Johnson which was based on a 1970s BBC series. I think it's an earlier version of the same thing. Another great (although very dry) book is 'Between Human and Machine - Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics' by David A. Mindell. This goes into the fire control stuff that I mentioned, and describes how one effect of the war was to force together the different groups that were working on analogue computation.
  - thingification 2y ago
    > I think ['The Secret War' by Brian Johnson is] an earlier version of ['Most Secret War' by R V Jones] Most Secret War is R V Jones' memoir of his personal involvement in radar, aerial navigation, aerial surveillance etc. in British military intelligence. I read it a long time ago but I don't remember it as a dry read at all - dramatic times after all. Brian Johnson was involved in writing and producing the BBC documentary and a book. So it's not an earlier version of the same thing. The documentary is on youtube I think - a good watch, but I'd recommend reading Jones' original book.
kibwen 2y ago
Everyone reading this right now needs to check out this 1950s naval training video on the mechanical fire control computers of battleships: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4 For fun, before you watch, think for yourself how you'd implement addition, multiplication, squaring, etc. with only gears and other mechanisms.
- TomatoCo 2y ago
  It's amazing what you can do with just gears, cams, and levers. Project-Rho provides a quick survey of mechanisms. https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/astrodeck.php#id--Computing--Analog_Computers https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/astrodeck.php#...

bloopernova 2y ago

If you've not read Most Secret War I highly recommend it. Dr R V Jones details some of the different systems involved in the Battle of Britain and it's a great book too.

KineticLensman 2y ago
I read 'The Secret War' by Brian Johnson which was based on a 1970s BBC series. I think it's an earlier version of the same thing. Another great (although very dry) book is 'Between Human and Machine - Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics' by David A. Mindell. This goes into the fire control stuff that I mentioned, and describes how one effect of the war was to force together the different groups that were working on analogue computation.
- thingification 2y ago
  > I think ['The Secret War' by Brian Johnson is] an earlier version of ['Most Secret War' by R V Jones] Most Secret War is R V Jones' memoir of his personal involvement in radar, aerial navigation, aerial surveillance etc. in British military intelligence. I read it a long time ago but I don't remember it as a dry read at all - dramatic times after all. Brian Johnson was involved in writing and producing the BBC documentary and a book. So it's not an earlier version of the same thing. The documentary is on youtube I think - a good watch, but I'd recommend reading Jones' original book.

kibwen 2y ago

Everyone reading this right now needs to check out this 1950s naval training video on the mechanical fire control computers of battleships: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4 For fun, before you watch, think for yourself how you'd implement addition, multiplication, squaring, etc. with only gears and other mechanisms.

TomatoCo 2y ago
It's amazing what you can do with just gears, cams, and levers. Project-Rho provides a quick survey of mechanisms. https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/astrodeck.php#id--Computing--Analog_Computers https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/astrodeck.php#...