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Comment by emersonrsantos | Hacker News Reader

I love pneumatic logic! I’ve gone to sleep many nights thinking about pneumatic logic gates, and they are still used today on pneumatic equipment powered by wind, like a lot of pipe organs in Europe made in the 1800’s where there was no electricity to turn on and off the pipes.

Here’s an example of such apparatus: https://www.woodofhuddersfield.com/uploads/1/1/2/3/11238427/...

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Yes, some pipe organs had enormous switching systems. They didn't do all that much; they just switched the keyboard to pipe rank connections. Physically, they were huge, like multiple upright pianos. Some needed compressed air for power; others were entirely electrical.

They had no direct function in producing sound. All this was separate from the actuators for the pipes.

Exactly, what produced the sound was pipes (and is, in a non-electrical or electronic organ) using the same air that feed the pipes by the bellows.

It replaced mechanical track action, keyboard coupling, register switching and even had memory to ‘remember’ a register presets or register sets.

That’s really neat! Could you provide some resources on this topic for learning more?

There’s not much open literature around it, but one of the inventors was an engineer called Charles Barker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barker_lever

This document has some designs and more details: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21204/21204-h/21204-h.htm , chapter III.

Thanks!

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