Mind blowing to think about, but computers outdate us all. The first one (that I’m aware of) is in a museum on the eastern United States region, somewhere. It’s sole purpose was to navigate sailing ships safely through coastal waters. It predated vacuum tubes and used a complicated series of gears, ACTUALLY trying to operate in binary. Though a valiant project for it’s creator and a notion extremely far ahead of it’s time, the required amount of “ROM” (gears) needed to make it work proved too much for the designer and it remains at only a fraction the size needed to complete it’s intended task. We can only guess at how much tonnage the completed version required…and if the ships intended to carry this tool could have stayed afloat.
Some early machine looms that wove intricate patterns used changeable punch cards, which could be considered the forerunners of programmable computers. And there were some early geared calculating machines. But I’ve never hear of the navigation computer that you mentioned. Quite interesting!
Mind blowing to think about, but computers outdate us all. The first one (that I’m aware of) is in a museum on the eastern United States region, somewhere. It’s sole purpose was to navigate sailing ships safely through coastal waters. It predated vacuum tubes and used a complicated series of gears, ACTUALLY trying to operate in binary. Though a valiant project for it’s creator and a notion extremely far ahead of it’s time, the required amount of “ROM” (gears) needed to make it work proved too much for the designer and it remains at only a fraction the size needed to complete it’s intended task. We can only guess at how much tonnage the completed version required…and if the ships intended to carry this tool could have stayed afloat.
Some early machine looms that wove intricate patterns used changeable punch cards, which could be considered the forerunners of programmable computers. And there were some early geared calculating machines. But I’ve never hear of the navigation computer that you mentioned. Quite interesting!