I took a deep dive for 12 months on how analog computers work(ed) and the result was a little kit and book that represent a kind of analog computer primer [1]. In short I took what I learned over the year and made something that would fast track others (you can probably go through the manual + kit in about two weeks and know as much as I do now).
I had originally wanted to get one of those Analog Things but was a little put off by the price (so of course I spent close to an order of magnitude more to develop my own analog computer).
Truly one of the most elegant implementations of all the basics that one could ask for.
In case you haven't dug into this dear reader, the Lunar Lander example is fascinating! Takes a bit of patience to set up, but is truly fun.
I'm left wondering at what other kind of hijinks a real, life-size ANALOG THING could be pressed into executing .. in a general sense I've always had a personal fascination with analog computers in other shapes and forms - pinball machines, electronic music synthesizers, the flowerbed - but like most I suppose, have spent nearly all my life attached to a digital one, in some way or another.
As I see it, a gravity/water-based analog thing is doable, and .. one fine Sunday afternoon, might be the perfect thing to design/prototype with whatever ML model will be waking up for some pushing around.
If there were, say, an electromagnetic means of tracking the state of a pinball as it traverses the playfield, and of course if the drop targets and bumpers and switches and flippers and things were all appropriately wired up, I wonder what it would take to program an analog computer thing to play a mean pinball...
That (electronic) analog computers have integrators is, as I have read, the whole reason analog computers existed—stuck around. Integration is ideal for simulating forces like gravity, etc. over time.
Early experimental X-planes (like the X-15, for example) had flight simulators that were completely analog—modeling the forces of lift, etc. (In the 1970's, there was even a commercial analog flight simulator sold [1].)
I took a deep dive for 12 months on how analog computers work(ed) and the result was a little kit and book that represent a kind of analog computer primer [1]. In short I took what I learned over the year and made something that would fast track others (you can probably go through the manual + kit in about two weeks and know as much as I do now).
I had originally wanted to get one of those Analog Things but was a little put off by the price (so of course I spent close to an order of magnitude more to develop my own analog computer).
[1] https://www.tindie.com/products/jcalhoun/anna-analog-compute...
Truly one of the most elegant implementations of all the basics that one could ask for.
In case you haven't dug into this dear reader, the Lunar Lander example is fascinating! Takes a bit of patience to set up, but is truly fun.
I'm left wondering at what other kind of hijinks a real, life-size ANALOG THING could be pressed into executing .. in a general sense I've always had a personal fascination with analog computers in other shapes and forms - pinball machines, electronic music synthesizers, the flowerbed - but like most I suppose, have spent nearly all my life attached to a digital one, in some way or another.
As I see it, a gravity/water-based analog thing is doable, and .. one fine Sunday afternoon, might be the perfect thing to design/prototype with whatever ML model will be waking up for some pushing around.
If there were, say, an electromagnetic means of tracking the state of a pinball as it traverses the playfield, and of course if the drop targets and bumpers and switches and flippers and things were all appropriately wired up, I wonder what it would take to program an analog computer thing to play a mean pinball...
That (electronic) analog computers have integrators is, as I have read, the whole reason analog computers existed—stuck around. Integration is ideal for simulating forces like gravity, etc. over time.
Early experimental X-planes (like the X-15, for example) had flight simulators that were completely analog—modeling the forces of lift, etc. (In the 1970's, there was even a commercial analog flight simulator sold [1].)
[1] https://inspire.eaa.org/2022/02/16/eaas-attic-atc-510-person...
Cool! Seems to be a digital 'clone' of https://the-analog-thing.org/ for anyone that needs to have this irl ;)
Simulating continuous-time differential equations on discrete clock cycles in a JavaScript engine is wonderfully perverse, but it works.
Working on an FPAA ASIC, this is very relevant!
This is so rad!
Totally tubular! (as in vacuum tubes)