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    13 videos · 3 hr 53 min
    Playlists

    Brass Brains: Computing With Gears

    Curated by HackerTube · 13 videos · 3 hr 53 min

    Hacker News keeps returning to one idea: a computer does not need electricity. This playlist starts with the smallest building block, a differential gear that adds two rotations, then shows those parts combined into Navy fire-control computers. From there it goes back through Antikythera, Babbage and Kelvin's tide machines, out to mechanical oddities, and ends with the case that analog computing may come back for AI.

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    1. 1
      9:31

      Around The Corner - How Differential Steering Works (1937)

      US Auto Industry · 22M views · 17 years ago

      Start with the 1937 GM film HN calls a marvel of teaching: the differential it explains is the adding unit every later machine here relies on.

    2. 2
      41:53

      Mechanical Computer (All Parts) - Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers

      Excelsior10000 · 483K views · 15 years ago

      The 1953 Navy training film, the full-length upload HN prefers, shows how shafts, cams and differentials put together solve firing equations; several commenters admit rewatching it many times.

    3. 3
      20:13

      The Most Powerful Computers You've Never Heard Of

      Veritasium · 14M views · 4 years ago

      Once the parts make sense, Veritasium supplies the history, from Antikythera to Kelvin's tide-predicting machines.

    4. 4
      6:53

      Building The World's First Computer - Greeks, Clocks and Rockets - Antikythera Mechanism Episode 1

      Clickspring · 1.1M views · 9 years ago

      Clickspring's opening episode on rebuilding the oldest known gear computer by hand, using only methods the Greeks could plausibly have had.

    5. 5
      1:01:04

      Charles Babbage and Difference Enginge No. 2 | Doron Swade | Talks at Google

      Talks at Google · 10K views · 18 years ago

      Doron Swade, who led the team that finally built Difference Engine No. 2, tells the Babbage story; HN points to the section around minute 36 on Ada Lovelace.

    6. 6
      3:39

      (1/4) Intro/History: Introducing a 100-year-old mechanical computer

      engineerguy · 476K views · 11 years ago

      Bill Hammack's short series on Michelson's harmonic analyzer, which does Fourier analysis with springs and levers, is what HN links whenever Fourier series come up.

    7. 7
      3:05

      IBM Selectric Typewriter & its digital to analogue converter

      engineerguy · 1.1M views · 15 years ago

      Three minutes of slow motion showing an office typewriter with a fully mechanical digital-to-analog converter inside.

    8. 8
      8:36

      The 3D-Printed Curta Calculator

      Adam Savage’s Tested · 2M views · 9 years ago

      The pocket-sized Curta, here as a scaled-up 3D-printed replica, so you can see the stepped drum that the original hides.

    9. 9
      28:52

      EEVblog #854 - B52 Bomber Automatic Astro Compass Teardown

      EEVblog · 189K views · 10 years ago

      A teardown of a working Cold War navigation computer, for anyone who wants to see the cams and gears from the Navy film in real hardware.

    10. 10
      4:37

      Making Money Flow: The MONIAC

      Reserve Bank of New Zealand · 120K views · 9 years ago

      A change of medium: Bill Phillips' machine models a national economy with water flowing through tanks and valves.

    11. 11
      3:34

      Marble adding machine

      MatthiasWandel · 2.4M views · 19 years ago

      Matthias Wandel's wooden binary adder moves from analog to digital logic, and HN says it inspired at least one commercial marble computer.

    12. 12
      19:22

      Mechanical circuits: electronics without electricity

      Steve Mould · 8.7M views · 4 years ago

      Steve Mould turns the analogy around and builds resistors, capacitors and transistors from chains and sprockets.

    13. 13
      21:42

      Future Computers Will Be Radically Different (Analog Computing)

      Veritasium · 13M views · 4 years ago

      It ends where HN threads usually end up, with the argument that continuous computation could return for neural-network inference.