The World Of Strange Computers 

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Don't know how accurate but there's a story of an economist who met a manager from the power company. The economist told the manager that the econometric models used to predict GDP growth had electricity growth forecasts from the power company, as one of the inputs. Interesting, said the manager, we use your GDP projections to forecast our electricity growth.

2:38 - Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "data leak".

"Water integrator" - A bucket being filled with water is a perfect analog of mathematical integration ! You can solve a multi-order differential equation, by string several integrators in series. In engineering school, in the early 1980s, we used, then outdated, analog computers, as "deluxe" 100-in-1 circuit kits. But, in a few labs, we used them to setup and solve differential equations.

You have the best youtube channel. Learning about obscure things like this is my JAM.

Computers are the most advanced invention of mankind, yet it is so easy for us to take them for granted.

I had no idea about the water actuator. This is right up my alley and I'm shocked this slipped by me all this time.

The model of the MONIAC at 5:17 is located at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Museum, don’t think it’s been run in a while, but every time I pass it I stare at it in wonder! Thank you very much for your clear explanations :)

The next iPhone will use a hydraulic computer. It will be called the iDraulic.

Sir Terry Pratchett has someone implement a system similar to the MONIAC in the Discworld series. I never knew it was based on a real thing. Of course, being a Discworld book, the "simulation" valves ended up having unpredictable results...

And now I know where Terry Pratchett's calculator in "Making Money" comes from.

Didn't knew effects were made by analog devices. That's incredible

Holy shit, thanks for posting this. The soviet water integrator is an ingenious example for our ability to make use of the things we have to, no matter how constrained

Submarine combat is always fascinating to me. Like, imagine trying to hit a helicopter with an arrow while you're lying on the ground with your eyes closed. That's essentially what sinking a surface ship with an unguided torpedo is like.

Two modern examples: - Piping an image through a multimodal lass fiber scrambles it, but the result is actually more easily classifiable by a simpler neural network. The fiber does some computational work! - Reservoir computing is also a weird idea

The Reserve Bank of NZ used a water analogue computer for economic analysis. It now exists in their museum.

If analogue computers have solutions for kinetic interference and cold-welding, I think they'd be superior in military/space applications because of the absolute resistance to radiation.

I watched this video to find out more about its title and ended watching several times. I was not mindblown, but rather like discovering a series of sealed geniuses Cave of Treasures. While exploring one you found out other ways to other forms of Forgotten / Hidden Knowledge. My highest gratitudes to New Mind RU-vidrs.

There are several tide computers that use a system of pulleys and wire to plot the tides that ran on well into the digital age.

15:02 That’s really slick! It’s almost like a modular synth, but your original “oscillator” is the camera. I think i have seen “Glitch Art” made by manipulating analog video, but never realized it was used in such a common thing. Neat!

if you do something like this again, one form of logic I've seen in one textbook, and never again, is fluid flow logic. It used the tendency of flowing fluids, such as air, to stick to a surface, so it wasn't pressure based. The example I remember most was an rs latch that had an input stream of air that would stick to a curve on one side of the latch, and flow to an output. a puff of air from the side would push the flow to stick to the other side of the channel, and leave via a different output, with a puff of air from the other side would push it back to stick to the first side again. The textbook was half electronic logic, using relays or transistors i think, and half fluid logic with various plexiglass gates allowing flow through a series of gates to do computations.

Oldies but favorites are the few thousand year old mechanical computers like the Chinese astronomy wooden computer tower, and my all time fav is the bronze antikythera device also predating is by millennia and masterfully crafted

You might want to check out the Soviet Setun ternary computer. I am quite fadcinated by technology and computers in particular. I never heard of those computers in the video (beside the domino) and I loved your video a lot. Thank you so much for all your effort.

the complexity of animations back then, and now you can ask an AI to make anything you want, done in a few seconds

This machine sounds like it's something out of a science fiction. CRAZY. Even Crazier that i've NEVER SEEN THIS EVER in any Science Fiction media. And i've read A LOT of SF books.

Subjects for the missing 'Part 2": the fluidic logic computer from Sperry-Univac, the Totalisator, the electronic analog research computers produced by the likes of Elliot, etc, differential analysers made from Meccano such as the example in Auckland's MOTAT.

This is my jam! cant get enough of odd compute devices

this is easily one of the most fascinating videos i've seen in ages!

I mostly liked the SCANIMATor analog frankenstein thing, it's astonishing how such a thing could even exist for real

Uncommonly good subject videos.. now subscribed.

Very well presented information. Excellent vids.

This is absolutely fascinating! Subbed!!

@16:41 a mug adding to overall user experince 'wow' factor :-)

subtitles are not available 😢

Wow, these computers Are really strange. Well done video.

Digital Derby was a handheld game and there was nothing digital about it.. Completely run by gears, a motor and a solenoid... genius

" ... so this is a quick presentation of the Water integrator. Next : The Water Dis-integrator!"

Interesting , Thank You .

Falling asleep to this gave me a sense of calm and wonder. I got to learn and dream, very soothing and highly informative.

Incredible. I am speechless. 😮😯😲

I've always been interested in analog computers run on electricity. The ones that use op-amps for integration/differentiation/summation etc. There is a really amazing demonstration how they are programmed and run: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3tOA8Fo6b7A.html It's very unusual because programming it involves connecting cables between different circuits. But, Despite this being a really great explanation, the math is over my head. I know a little bit of calculus, but not differential equations. So, I'm taking it upon myself to learn differential equations at some point, and maybe, hopefully one day build a crude analog computer. I certainly have enough op-amps to do it (literally pennies a piece these days). I've built digital CPUs, ALUs, memory/register modules etc to put together and make a crude digital computer from scratch, not even cards or motherboards, just chips and transistors etc. It feels like it would be a fitting "prequel" to build an analog computer.

These are very cool. One thing tho, if the system under study was chaotic, meaning that its very highly sensitive to initial conditions, and they had no idea. It would’ve driven the researchers absolutely bonkerz 😂, coz every time it would’ve given a totally different answer. Even nowadays that we use numerical methods to solve the so called impossible differential equations. If the system is chaotic, it does the same thing.

I like the cup-holder rack module, at 16:45.

Amazing, I want the schematics of these.

Learning about Water integrator was cool!

Great video 😊

So nice to see a Slide Rule

... and don't forget the greatest of all: the Antikythera mechanism!

Scanimate is mesmerizing

One of fantastic and fascinating technology that i knew today.

10:30 for about a minute on, some of this reminds me of the Turbo Encabulator video. lol

Sound very similar to Van Gelder's centrifugal governor I learned in an Ai class.

Excellent

When the Minister for the Economy showed the National Development Program (early 1970s) to Economist and Opera Critic Mario Henrique Simonsen, the Professor replied "I don't read fiction". I bet if someone had invited him to see the Macroeconomic Computer he would say "I don't watch fiction". Analog computers are powerful and some even fit around a wristwatch! (that sliding ruler some watches have). Now ... let's keep watching to see if the video will mention an imprecise processor Tim Palmer talked about on some lecture of his.

Very cool video

Fascinating, smart people finding solutions by making their own tools, will be interesting to see if llm ai needs something more than the sum of human knowledge to make the big advances moving forward.

Naval gunfire control systems way more complicated than torpedo systems. Were analog into the 80’s. Add another axis because you’re also shooting at airplanes.

No mention of Charles Babbage? No mention of the Difference Engine? No Ada Lovelace? Oh well..

Ok, and how large are the holes in all the tubing of the MONIAC representing graft and cprruption?

Also was a computer in anciante Greece (i guess) , it was found on sinked ship, this analog mechanism can predict planet movements by gear mechanism

Excellent video. Thanks from Colorado.

the real question is, can they run Doom?

brilliant

I don't know why YT keeps sending me these but what I saw in the thumbnail was what I expected to see. I thought someone built some sort of interesting device. Some historical facts were interesting but then while narration went on we start seeing a bunch of videos captured on cell phones, you know the ones with all the distortion on the sides where it looks like a vertical collidescope. Hydrolic, pneumatic and mechanical computation has been around for a long time.

sigh, i genuinely had hoped someone had made something like that calculate computer in the thumbnail.

everywhere else you engineer things for water, in soviet Russia, water engineers things for you

How do you retain all this knowledge from your videos?

Continuous gates hold so much more information then discret gates. It took millions of transistors to imitate what a few water pipes could do. The day we achieve miniaturization of continuous gates like we did with transistors, we will discover a new era of computing.

plz make detailed vdo on water computer

Animation sequencers look like Winamp animations, actually

I would use titles and small breaks between each story.

you missed a cherry opportunity for a "trickle-down economics" joke

Hello ❤

Could not the domino computer reset if weighted dominos were mounted on wires? - think table football figures.

Computer is kind of tool, or tool to compute. The essence of tool is to make work easier. The domino computer make work harder.

Aaaaah so this pump valve machine is what an igor operates to see a representation of the world in that terry pratchett book

If you wanna see a truly unconventional computer, search this: "Let's BUILD a COMPUTER in CONWAY's GAME of LIFE"

Was expecting slime molds to be on the list....

Isn't that the actual "conventional computing"?! since it has been utilized before our current technology.. Unconventional might be something like silicon photonics (which I'd love to see you cover btw)

Surprised you didn’t cover some of the Minecraft computers that have been built over the years 😊

I'm sure my teammates play on Domini Computers sometimes.

am I going insane I thought I already watched this video I watched this video 19 minutes after it was posted and yet it's not an my history

We could use CRISPR to grow crystalline computers that operate using photons instead of bits heh

The fatal flaw with the Moniac is it did not, and in fact, could not, nor ever will be able to compensate for the printing press - government printing of fiat currency by diktat.

Great video, but first thumbnail made me to not watch it. Too big clickbait ;) But it was worth to watch.

TriSolaran physical computer wasn’t mentioned? WTF mate?

The missile knows where it is at all times.......

It's not almost disposable it literally is disposable even single use devices designed to be used once and thrown away have computing power of 70s high end fridge size machines

But does it work below freezing temperature?

Also, computers implemented on Minecraft.

❤❤❤

Now make it run Doom

I think the video would be better if there was more information and less flourish. Water integrator gets more modular, what does that even mean? It then gets more modular?? I don't need to hear so many adjectives, its a video essay not a written essay, so you should be expressing details through visuals and flourish through intonation and structure. From 3:00 to 3:30, there is almost no useful information beyond the factoid the water integrator gets mass produced. Interesting material though. C-

Someone Tom Hardy’d my vision! 1:00

Very instructive ! Thanks. By the way, I remember seeing a short video on RU-vid that shows how a mechanical computer caused the crash of a Russian rocket : ru-vid.comteXbDTN5Q2U

Where's the thumbnail computer? I'm hitting Do Not Recommend Channel.

👍

reup?

Niceee

I thought Russia was built on vodka not water