16 Oct
2007
16 Oct
'07
10:42 a.m.
Graham Toal wrote:
Here's a very interesting 1951 paper on the construction of a complex
boolean logic unit using relays. It's contemporary with the more
better-known Kalin-Burkhart machine.
http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/docs/mechanized_reasoning_screenres.pdf
This is the first time this paper has been put online. I received it
as a photocopy of the original from J B Smith's sister.
This is at screen resolution. I'll post a higher-res version later
for printing. (I had to clean up the paper considerably from the
original using Photoshop.)
If you're interested in the history of logic machines, you should also
look for machines by Alfred Smee (1851), and William Stanley Jevons
(1870)
Graham
References:
http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&channel=2PSP&q=Kal…
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=%22mechanized+reas…
Thanks for putting that up, fits in as a contemporary of Simon as an early
logic educational instrument (and the Kalin-Burkhart refs lead through
Berkeley's Giant Brains book).
I don't think I've seen Smee mentioned before, have to go look him up; Jevons
did the mechanical 'logic piano' didn't he? I'm trying to remember the
name of
another fellow who made an electrical logic instrument ca 1900-1910. IIRC, it
was interesting in that it used dual-coil relays as gates, each coil being an
input, and making the gate construction look a little more like modern gates
than typical multi-contact relay logic.
Also reminds me of the Kosmos (from Germany) "computer"/(switching)-logic
trainer from the late-60s/early-70s I received as a kid. I think Radio Shack
marketed it over here for a while, later in the 70s.