12 Nov
2007
12 Nov
'07
5:39 a.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Jason T wrote:
Go to the link Jason supplied and then go up a level to differntial analysers
In addition to the page for his own analyser, Tim Robinson has web pages there
about both the Manchester and Cambridge analysers. According to Tim the Cambridge
machine is in New Zealand and still exists.
(back to VCFX photos) .. love that picture of the LINC, too.
I haven't heard much comment on VCFX although the agenda looked like it was
going to be quite interesting. I was curious what might have been said at the
talk about the 4004 (thinking in part of the discussion here a couple of weeks ago).
On 11/11/07, Andrew Burton <aliensrcooluk at
yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Hmm, I thought the company who had the rights had recently (within the last
year) folded, and so the future was uncertain. Maybe that was just the UK
distributors...
Back on topic...
I recently met up with some of the folks who run the Whipple Museum of the
History of Science, based at Cambridge uni (UK), and ended up spending an age
looking through some of their computing-related artifacts. Amongst the photos
was quite a pile of ones of a Meccano differential analyser built at the
university in the '30s and credited to John Lennard-Jones (under whom Maurice
Wilkes was a researcher).
All really fascinating stuff - not only because of the fact that it was built,
but because of the material used :-)
Didn't Manchester uni also have one built from Meccano? I think I've heard of
one before built there - not sure what year it was, though. The awesome differential engine mechanical
computer looks as if it has
been made out of (or atleast held together with) meccano. Am I right? I
played with my dads meccano set when I was a kid, but didn't really build
much.
The oracle of Wiki tells us that Meccano bought the Erector trademark
around 1990, so I guess they are the same thing now.
Ah, here's his page. Meccano it is:
http://meccano.us/differential_analyzers/robinson_da/index.html >