15 Feb
2008
15 Feb
'08
6:53 a.m.
Brent Hilpert wrote:
To be realisitic about what might have been
accomplished in 1900 the whole
issue of building a large system of hundreds/thousands of components needs to
be looked at more seriously. Will raised the issue for tubes, but it applies to
all the other components as well, regarding reliability, uniformity and
stability of characteristics. The idea of building such large systems was
considered daunting or simply implausible even in the 1940's, after decades of
development of components - even regarding something as seemingly simple as resistors.
I think at one time you could get resistors with a 50% range of tolarance when they
first came out, say around the 1900's.
Or, for example, solid-state diodes: the discovery may
have been made in 1874,
but in the early 1900s the only thing actually available (TMK) was the cat's
whisker (a tad finicky) - forget about building anything utilising more than a
couple of them.
And you piss off the cat making your diode.
Then there's achieving a stable power supply.
Well you would have your own power plant -- coal, gas ( as in gas lamps) or
hydro-electric.
..so, depends on where you want to draw the line
between concept and practice.
The principles/theory of digital systems implementation may be straighforward,
the practical reality when dealing with unreliable/variable components isn't so
(including tubes); in particular if you don't have some heavily-non-linear
device to base your basic gate design around. In 1900 there was very little in
the electrical domain that was reliable or consistent for the purposes being
discussed.