On Mon, Jul 22, 2024 at 06:53:19PM -0600, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote: > On Sat, Jul 20, 2024 at 8:08?PM Steve Lewis via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > What I meant was that in the title of the book they use "digital computer" > > and I wonder if there was ever a book describing a mechanical "analog > > computer" - and what they might even look like. > > > > I haven't looked for a book, but if you'll settle for Wikipedia: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_analyser
For those who might be interested, here's a small manual for the differential analyzer that was at the University of Pennsylvania. That machine was used primarily by the Army during WWII, but was made available for general use after the war. This booklet appears to have been printed in 1952. http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/other/diff-upenn.pdf Please excuse the scan quality. This was scanned from microfilm of the ENIAC trial exhibits. The pages with photographs were particularly hard to set an intensity curve that would mostly clear up the background but still show some detail in the photos. BLS
