Analog computers are way way old school. Essentially you would wire up circuits to do math functions and when you put a signal in, the voltage out was the answer. It could do multiplication, addition, integration, differentiation and other functions. The answer was visible on an oscilloscope screen (often included).
This is a Polish Model (from wikipedia, I think). Could it possibly look any cooler? That’s gotta be an old school desk for a base.
Look at that bad boy!
So you would program these by plugging single conductor phone jacks into the various on board components. Although this one does look a bit different. Normally it would look like a ’40s telephone switchboard with wires all over the place. This one is probably transistor driven. Heathkit made a 75 tube model that is a behemoth.
So… you probably see where I am going with this… but I will save that for the next post.
That looks like some of the funkier early televisions, way cool!
Well.. it is in a way.. that part is just a CRT which uses the same concepts as the TV I just finally replaced. Instead of using a broadcast signal to deflect the beam, this uses the results of the analog computation.
How cool would it be to have that sitting in the living room?