Is the world ready for a lego babbage engine?
Yes, yes, I really hope it is :)
A proposal for Lego to build an Analytical Engine staffed by Babbage and Lovelace characters has received just under a third of the support it needs to be considered for production. The pleasantly designed product was proposed to Lego's internal Ideas programme, and at the time of writing has amassed 2,972 supporters of the …
This is an example of everything that is wrong with Lego, computers today and the modern world (bah humbug)
A kit of the technical Lego with shafts and gears to make even a single 1/2 adder would be worth supporting but this is the equivalent of "today in IT lesson we are going to learn to draw a logo of what a web site about women in computers would be like"
"today in IT lesson we are going to learn to draw a logo of what a web site about women in computers would be like"
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I know I was first fascinated by pictures of computers in encyclopedias (which were probably 10 years out of date) as a youth. I know I'd have loved to have the kind of creative possibility kids today have at the achievable cost of some lego and a raspberry.
When I were a lad, we only got to do restaurant menus in wordwise, which sounds like learning to draw a logo to me.
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You're lucky, some of us could only afford calculators with 7 digits not 8 (I think the one on my ruler only had 6, hence only (1) 318008 ).
Plus, 55378008 pretty much sums up most of the girls in our school anyway, and a lot of us were 35380. (http://www.presentandcorrect.com/blog/250-words-you-can-spell-with-a-calculator).
I know I was first fascinated by pictures of computers in encyclopedias (which were probably 10 years out of date) as a youth.
Hell yeah. Time Life Science books, so mysterious. Those were the times.
There are a number of Lego Turing machines (TM#1, TM#2) but they cheat, coming with an integrated Universal Turing Machine already. Would LEGO DIFFERENCE ENGINE make the same error?
half - adder? http://www.randomwraith.com/halfadder.html
The Technic boys (and girls) are already all over such stuff and an individual set - as opposed to a huge set that allowed you to build various logic circuits in bricks - probably wouldn't get the votes.
The successful Lego Ideas project is half build experience, half art when finished.
This one might play to the STEM lot, the set with three women scientists sold proverbially well.
My childhood bricks were 'Minibrix'; they were good for building houses. If you got more bricks you could build either more houses or bigger houses. That was more or less all they were good for. But now you can use virtual Minibrix on your computer! <http://www.virtual.minibrix.com/>
He's missed a trick here - with a few minor modifications it would also make a superb geeky Pi2 case (as another way to market and sell the project).
OK so a Babbage engine with a micro-USB and an HDMI cable coming out of it is not entirely historically accurate, but it would help get the thing funded and into production.
Anyway at least one more vote (mine) added, and I should admit my Pi2 at home is currently sat in a case made of Lego, albeit one nowhere near as well constructed or cool-looking at this one.
even a 4 bit adder would be a huge amount of technic.
But interesting. In theory a 6502 can be made from cogs, pegs and levers and program run from Lego sheets with dots to indicate punched holes.
A babbage machine like lego toy with Ada and Charles minifigs is at least a tribute. A working lego mechanical computer might fill a room.
Judging by the couple of simple examples below, it would probably be quite a large room too...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UulJaoDAflw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfFbX2GgPnE
Maybe one for the turbine room at Tate Modern, which would sort out the funding aspect too (if calling it "art" isn't too pretentious).
If it isn't too pretentious it isn't art.
I have a mate whose attitude towards art (and we have quite a lot of temporary exhibitions at my place of work) can be summed up as, "if it needs a label to explain itself, then it isn't art". He has a point. Some of the things we host have 200 word explanations and you still don't really know what the heck it's meant to "be".
M.
re: Pi stuffed in a Lego box=pointless
But sometimes being completely pointless is part of the charm
It is?! Good, then I only need six of the damn kits.
I'm on board, but my Ye Olde Lego Shoppe Username is not. Just need to re-reg with the first party plastic people and I think I can click this into existence.
If my kid says "who's that" then the job is done! If not, I will add them to the Lego Ferrari Pit Crew. ;)
They had to keep up with modern kids who want more specific toys, like MindStorms, Star Wars, pirates-o-plastic, Friends, etc. You can still buy big boxes of the multi-coloured normally shaped bricks, or even any brick design available in unit form. We have several of those simple kits for building just stuff, some pink bricks for the little gals(she does not like the Friends), and lots of Star Wars and other co-branded kits for us big kids. The shop is very modern, but you can still get some classic items and big boxes of just bricks if you search around.
"Now you get a kit that will build one thing and that's it."
After building it once - the kids usually add to their pool of components and their imagination takes over. We learn by imitating. Like programming in a new language it is useful to work through an example before you create your own.
I disagree. my Meccano 'set' was a bunch of cast offs that older relatives had lost interest in (quickly). I never built any of the intended items (I had no instructions anyway). Instead I started building bridges - cos I always liked bridges. I learned about things like triangulation, maximum unsupported span, and suspension by trial and error. I not only learned what they were but also why they were.