21 Jan
2004
21 Jan
'04
2:42 a.m.
On 20 Jan 2004, R. D. Davis wrote:
Quothe John Lawson, from writings of Tue, Jan 20, 2004
at 03:55:27PM -0500:
I made a rudimentary one today. I took two half glasses of water. I
needed to compute something analogous to 1 + 1, so I poured one glass into
the other and it worked! (It also turns out that whether the glass is
half full or half empty, if you combine them together then one is full and
one is empty...there's some sort of philosophical riff there).
I then kept pouring the water back and forth between each other: a
FlipFlop!
How's that? :)
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
And no one has had the utter madness to
suggest a replica of the Mark I
or II relay machine..... or the SSEC.... or any of the Bell System relay
computers....
Relays don't normally glow, alas, but they do make nice sounds.
My preference is for a digital computer using water instead of
electricity, but no one's mentioned one of those yet.