Legendary steampunk computer 'should be built' - programmer

Competition

Being able to run an interesting competition is some sort of marker for whether it's a real computer... back when the replica of the Manchester SSEM or 'Baby' was being put together I wrote to the team suggesting that they run a programming competition for it. Which I was glad to see them do.

Posted AC because I never got any credit at the time either...

"Steampunk"?

You sicken me. The Analytical Engine is (or will be) a machine for computing, not a toy for a pretentious child.

i wonder

if that bunch of cards lovingly crafted by Ava will get fed into the machine and a single piece of paper will ticker-tape out of the other end saying

Hello World!

Pray, Mr. Babbage...

"On two occasions I have been asked, – "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

The first luser support calls in recorded history.

Reminds me...

"... the cyclonic hum of a trillion twisting gears, all air gone earthquake-dark in a mist of oil, in the fractioned heat of intermeshing wheels. Black seamless pavements, uncounted tributary rivulets for the frantic travels of the punched-out lace of data, the ghosts of history loosed in this hot shining necropolis. Paper-thin faces billow like sails, twisting, yawning, tumbling through the empty streets, human faces that are borrowed masks, and lenses for a peering Eye.

- The Difference Engine, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling"

...why I stopped reading Gibson (after a chapter or 2 of Idoru). Tried once cos of the hype around him and boy did I hate it. So er, thanks for reminding me. I did think of checking out the Difference Engine but will avoid it and stick to proper SciFi and not pretentious wank like the above. I know, different tastes and all that. Seriously though, thanks for reminding me :o)

But will the design allow for...

a doubling of boiler and furnace capacity every 18 months?

/0

Powered mechanical calculators from the 1930s, as seen in The Small Back Room, survived.

I ask what was the instruction set. Simulators at noon.

Bah!

Punched cards don't come on a "reel" - you're thinking of paper tape.

Punched cards come in decks, or if you're talking Jacquard -type cards, fanfold stacks similar to those used in player pianos.

Some expert.

Already One

The original Zuse Z-1 was a mechanical computer, although designed on very different mechanical principles than the Analytical Engine.

What is perhaps a bigger tragedy than Babbage's failure, which was probably unavoidable, was that Torres y Quevedo was not able to successfully construct his attempt at a general-purpose computer, made with electrical relays. That could have led to computers existing much earlier than was actually the case.

It would be nice to have a working Analytical Engine, but spending that much money on something that would basically just look pretty in a museum is questionable. When we can afford it more easily, perhaps.

Better passify those cog surfaces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_welding

Don't Give To HP (EDS)!

Whatever they do, please don't give it to the old EDS to write the code for. If this project has been running for 200 years then they will use that to guide their thoughts on delivery timescales and the sun will have burnt its last embers before we see anything.

I would have suggested that HP might have the technology to build this, however they seem to have lost their way recently by hiring a failed software leader, so heaven help HP if he's let loose in Packard's old garage.

Reminds me...

... why I started reading Gibson. If that passage doesn't do anything for you, definitely don't try Neal Stephenson, Stephen Donaldson, Poul Anderson, Brian Aldiss, Charles Stross, Philip Dick, Robert Silverberg, Alfred Bester or Ray Bradbury (picking a few of the more literary SF writers). Asimov or Heinlein might be OK. Otherwise the Star Wars tie-ins are a safe bet.

SF books can be just a paper version of a Michael Bay film - and if that's all you want, then fine. The Stainless Steel Rat series is great fun. But there's no reason that SF can't be more that that.

Why do it the wrong way?

There are at least two better ways to build a non-electronic computer using principles that were understood in the middle 1800s. It's a huge shame that Babbage never encountered them.

The first is electromagnetism. Use relays. I don't think they'd been invented, but I'm sure if you'd asked a young Faraday how to turn an electric current on or off using another electric current, he'd have invented the relay in minutes. Anything binary that can be done with a transistor can be done with a relay. Don't know if a stored-program computer has ever been built out of relays, but complicated logic often still is. That's because relays have quite enormous noise immunity and can be designed to fail safe. Good characteristics for (say) safety interlock systems in a nuclear power station.

The second is fluidics/ pneumatic logic. Logic gates and binary storage can both be created out of streams of compressed air (or water), rather than streams of electrons. For a fun application, look up the water computer that someone built at MIT. I believe that a compressed air computer has actually been used inside a jet engine (probably in the days of Germanium transistors which couldn't hack hot places).

Note: a clock rate of many kilohertz should be achievable. Practical note: one could give such a beast keyboard input (like an organ, but with more complex pipework). Aesthetic note: a factor of two is an octave, threes give perfect fifths, fives give major thirds. Some algorithms might sound quite pleasant as they crunched. Anyone fancy writing a simulator including audio?

The Next Control Step ...... a Quantum Communications Power Leap.

"Graham-Cumming writes on his blog:

I say that it's time Britain built the Analytical Engine. After the wonderful reconstruction of the Difference Engine we need to finish Babbage's dream of a steam-powered, general-purpose computer. "

Time has moved things on quite considerably, Graham-Cumming, and today are all of us in an altogether different space, and hosted hosting place in CyberSpace.

The Post Modern, Babbage Analytical Engine for the LOVE Lace of Ada is AIdDeep and Welcoming Passion delivering PerlyGatedDPython Strings for New Fangled Meme Entanglement .......the SMARTer NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive IT Drivers for stream-powered, multi-purpose, unilateral controlling command of computers and coded Programs.

CodedDXSSXXXX ProgramMING is just one of ITs Utilities and is a Sophisticated Facility for AIdDriver Target Acquisition Systems ..... and acts as a Virtual Master Key and Crack Hack Tool for both Public Pilot Projects and Private Pirate Raids ...... and all blissful kinds of blessed shenanigans in between.

And that is so much more Enigmatic Bletchley Park than Dogmatic Science Museum ..... and most probably also the sort of Subject Matter of ESPecial Interest to a BAE or Foreign Officed Clone/Sister System.