Torpedo Data Computer Mark 3 – Jun 1944 (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Torpedo Data Computer Mark 3 – Jun 1944 (2013)

maritime.org

42 pointsabrax31418 comments

Some videos of a very similar computer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1i-dnAH9Y4

This is an excellent video about analog computer basics. I've watched it many times and it's always entertaining and educational.

It's hard to imagine, but these things were still in active service well in to the 1980s, for example in the Vulcan bomber which flew a raid to the Falklands.

The British torpedos used in the Falklands war were designed in 1925 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_21_inch_torpedo#21_inc...

This computer (or one very similar to it) was described in the great WW2 submarine yarn _Run Silent, Run Deep_. Amazing to see the actual manual for it so many years after imagining it while reading the book. The book is well worth a read, although as you'd expect it does have 1940s-era white-people sensibilities about race and gender.

Trigonometry is so dangerous the US Navy classified its access in 1944: https://twitter.com/kdeldycke/status/790891194561822720

The same site has a complete set of manuals for a WW2 era US submarine: http://maritime.org/doc/index.htm#ss

I came here to post that URL, but without the fragment. In other words, don't miss navigating up to the top level of the docs/ hierarchy -- looks to have lots of interesting stuff.

As per the book:

    weight : 1,507 lb

Dense construction.

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