Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [OM] Godspeed, Neil Armstrong--now sliderule/calculators

Subject: Re: [OM] Godspeed, Neil Armstrong--now sliderule/calculators
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2016 15:32:11 -0700
On 3/19/2016 8:29 AM, Mike Lazzari wrote:
Never have seen a mechanical critter in action.

The Facit is really quite tame. Although motorized, it's a simple adaptation of a hand cranked machine that dates back to at least the 30s. So it just doesn't run very fast, I would guess to avoid overtaxing a design created for hand cranking.

I remember that the statistics lab had about 30 big mechanical calculators the size of typewriters.

Back in the late '90s, I was blown away by the Commodore S61, a truly powerful statistical calculator I could hold in my hand. Way more powerful than that room full. <http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/cbm_s61.html> Data entry was beyond tedious, but I could do research that wasn't possible any other way where I was at the time. They didn't have a stat package on the mainframes yet - or perhaps hadn't told the world outside MIS or given access.

It was fun to go down the line and punch in 30! or whatever was the max that they could do. Nothing like a room full of the big machines clattering away for 5-10 minutes to entertain a teenage boy. The profs, not so much. :)

The innards of those things are orders of magnitude more complex than the Facit. They are chock full of amazing numbers of small wheels, cogs, gears, springs, and so on. And they drove them quite fast, to get answers in the same decade. ;-) I, of course, hung around when the service/maintenance man was working on them, and got to see them working with covers off. Sort of awe inspiring. I could see why they really needed monthly maintenance to keep running.

Calculating Moose

--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz