Brian L. Stuart wrote:
> On analog computers:
> I always feel like the odd man out when I talk about having actually
> worked with analog computers. In fact my farewall lecture at Rhodes
> College where I taught for 6 years was on the subject of analog
> computers. About 20 years ago, my first thoughts about AI were also
> along the lines of a "stored program analog computer." It's quite
> possible to imagine what such a concept might mean, but the difficulty
> is determining what purpose it would serve. Remember that an analog
> computer is basically a big differential equation solver. We can
> certainly design it in a way that when certain conditions are reached,
> we change the equations being solved, but how would we apply that
> to AI? Also the combination of analog and digital computer was
> fairly common and called a hybrid computer. EIA was one of the
> manufcaturers of such beasts. I still have fond memories of the
> 640/680 I used in college.
A stored program analog computer should be quite straightforward.
It's just necessary to figure a quicker and easier way to carve
the cams, probably best done by offloading the job to digital
computers running the machine tools. Possibly associated with
some robotics to install the cams.
--
Ward Griffiths
Dylan: How many years must some people exist,
before they're allowed to be free?
WDG3rd: If they "must" exist until they're "allowed",
they'll never be free.
Received on Thu Mar 19 1998 - 00:10:08 GMT