On 20 Jan 2004, R. D. Davis wrote:
> Quothe John Lawson, from writings of Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 03:55:27PM -0500:
> > And no one has had the utter madness to suggest a replica of the Mark I
> > or II relay machine..... or the SSEC.... or any of the Bell System relay
> > computers....
>
> Relays don't normally glow, alas, but they do make nice sounds.
>
> My preference is for a digital computer using water instead of
> electricity, but no one's mentioned one of those yet.
I made a rudimentary one today. I took two half glasses of water. I
needed to compute something analogous to 1 + 1, so I poured one glass into
the other and it worked! (It also turns out that whether the glass is
half full or half empty, if you combine them together then one is full and
one is empty...there's some sort of philosophical riff there).
I then kept pouring the water back and forth between each other: a
FlipFlop!
How's that? :)
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Wed Jan 21 2004 - 02:42:07 GMT