14 Feb
2008
14 Feb
'08
9:56 a.m.
Tube theory means virtually nothing to me (except
that I know that the
earliest ones weren't exactly paragons of reliability :-) - but I suspect
that the answer to "could it be done" is a yes. The end result might not give
out sane data most of the time, would probably be as big as a house, and
likely wouldn't run for more than a day or two before everyone gave up in
disgust - but I suspect it'd be *possible*
No. No. No. No.
If I were better at probabilities and statistics, I could probably
*prove* it to be impossible, or close enough to it to not matter
anymore. Take into account variations of the tubes and the time needed
to tweak out the variations, and figure in the MTBF of the devices and
the number of devices, and I think the result would be very near zero.
I do not even think that the industry at the time could even make
enough tubes to keep up with the demands for just one machine.
That's probably covered by the "modern
knowledge" part of the aforementioned
post
If you have modern knowledge, and all that knowledge it built on, just
make an Intel Core 2.
See above though - depends how much of a factor the
"modern knowledge" part
is. If people of 1900 knew how a tube worked, but just couldn't make a very
good one...
People in 1906 did not know how a tube worked. And barely how to make
them or use them.
I can not think of anything in our modern world - or even in the near
past - that was so much a "barely-there" technology.
--
Will