>> Perhaps a real computer historian can chime in here, but I vaguely
recall
>> that there was considerable experimentation and debate early in the
>> development of electronic computers along the lines of analog vs.
digital,
>> von neumann vs non-von, analogies to electronic brains, etc.
>
What do you mean by Von Neumann? I see that as a self-replicating
mechanism...
>
>I have here a book from the Philips Technical Library called 'Practical
>Robot Circuits' published in 1960. The first half of this book contains
>the design for a robot 'dog' using essentially an analogue control
system
>(mostly amplifiers and comparators) to process the signals from various
>sensors (photocells, microphones, thermistors, etc). The outputs of the
What can this "dog" do? Does it have any kind of interesting
abilities?
>
>BTW, the electronic side of the device uses valves (vacuum tubes).
>
>The second half of the book describes a tic-tac-toe machine, again
using
>valves. This one is entirely digital AFAIK.
Why does EVERYONE love Tic-Tac-Toe so much? Bill Gates made a program,
this book has a machine....
[snip]
AFAIK, the Soviet Union, before it broke apart, put a lot of time
into analog and mechanical machines, anything but pure IC logic,
anyway. This was partly because they(we) didn't have the technology
to make reliable VLSI ICs on a large scale, but mostly that the
weird non- or semi-digital machines can handle a lot more beating
and EM interference.
>
>I seem to recall that A.K. Dewdeny (That's not the right spelling...)
>wrote about 'analogue gadgets' in Scientific American at some point.
The
>basic point IIRC was that analogue systems are good at providing fast
>_approximate_ solutions to certain problems.
>
>-tony
>
>
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Received on Wed Mar 18 1998 - 19:56:44 GMT