brb, away from crank
March 10, 2011 9:02 AM   Subscribe

1950s US Navy training film on mechanical fire-control computers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (via Boing Boing)

You'll see some of these concepts at work if you look inside an old electromechanical pinball machine, but a battleship is a few orders of magnitude more complex.
posted by luvcraft (4 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: double, like pew pew double -- jessamyn



 
"... accuracy depends on the quality of information it receives..."

Yeah, GIGO has been around that long.
posted by k5.user at 9:13 AM on March 10, 2011


Wow, I never knew how differentials worked. I mean, gears adding up numbers is pretty impressive to me for some reason. That was pretty cool.
posted by circular at 9:22 AM on March 10, 2011


ooh, it's a triple, even! Alas.
posted by luvcraft at 9:22 AM on March 10, 2011


Yeah, GIGO has been around that long.
On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage
posted by DU at 9:23 AM on March 10, 2011 [1 favorite]


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