🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 15 Mar 2018 07:38:37 +0000, AndyW <An...@nojunqmail.com> wrote:

>On 14/03/2018 19:29, Gareth's Downstairs Computer wrote:
>> We certainly covered the principles in my
>> electronics degree ('69 - '72), but AIUI
>> there was a pre-war mechanical analogue
>> computer made with the Meccano erector set.
>
>Also covered in my degree in the Control theory modules, it was easier 
>to use the analogue computer to simulate control systems than try to 
>simulate it on the PCs of the time.
>Our analogue computer was a shiny steel table with various 
>electromechanical doodahs* on magnetic bases. We stuck them down. 
>connected them up with string, rods, cables and belts and tried to make 
>sense of all the calculus and control equations we worked out theoretically.
>Legend has it that somewhere in the mists of time somebody actually 
>managed to get it to make sense.

I took that course a few years later and we had an electronic analog
computer, from TI IIRC.  It was kind of fun but by the time I got my
first engineering job digital was "in" and just suggesting the use of
analog anything marked one as some kind of reactionary, at least in
the place I worked.
>
>*Genuine technical term by the way
>
>
>Andy