Do you have any diagrams of the mechanical fire control computers?
>
>The line is always grey...
>
>> Didn't that have something to do with RADAR? Or was it cryptography?
>
>No, not radar.
>
>Radar, incidently, was just about the first use of digital electonics.
>Although there was no computation at the digital level*, vacuum tube
>flip-flops and counters were used in the timing circuits, as well in
IFF
>codes (The NRL even tried out a pre-1940 IFF box that used a real
binary
>word for the codes, with the hope that encryption would follow. It
turned
>out to just be a lab rat, however, and most of the war years saw the
>horrible British MkIII system in use.).
>
>*The mechanical fire control computers, on the other hand, are truely
>awesome devices. They would accept a bunch of real time input data
(some
>from the radars, some from the ships' gyros, some from the gun pointers
>(sailors), and even internal data like how many times the gun was
>fired (wear on the barrels)) - and output a bunch of data to set up the
>shot. It worked well - incredibly well - 20 mile hits on the first shot
>were not uncommon. It took YEARS before an electronic computer could
rival
>them.
>
>Tons of metal, but built like a Swiss watch.
>
>William Donzelli
>william_at_ans.net
>
>
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Received on Wed Jun 17 1998 - 13:06:55 BST