Throbac: THrifty Roman numeral BAckwards-looking Computer | Hacker News Reader

Throbac: THrifty Roman numeral BAckwards-looking Computer

mitmuseum.mit.edu

23 pointsrfarley049 comments

How can they only have one low resolution picture and only pictures of the outside?? What display tech does it use? I can't imagine there are Roman Numeral Nixie tubes. https://www.kuenzigbooks.com/pages/books/28672/claude-e-shan... I see Clear Lower, Clear KBD, Clear Upper. 7 'digits' display, but wow if anything needed a manual...

The document is available on IEEExplore: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5311583

I've reproduced here: https://pdfupload.io/docs/13f78f9d

Amazing, thank you for the link! There's an entire 'collected papers' on the IEEE website. I'm going to miss my college library accounts now i'm graduated!

After staring at the linked PDF for a while, I think the display was a collection of lightbulbs (presumably behind a mask plate), probably arranged something like this:

     Upper dial   V XV
     (Quotient)    III
  
     Lower dial LLLVV
  (Accumulator) XXX X
                   IIII

Yeah, it's a relay counter like a score motor in a pinball machine, but each rotor is different since the I is mod 5, the V is mod2 and the LX is mod 80, directly connected to the lights. The principles discussion is well done. Wow I love old tech documentation! I still don't have a good visualization of what the display 'dial' looks like

So the name is a throwbackronym?

Anybody has video of this thing at work?

Claude Shannon was the Fabrice Bellard of his time (or is it the other way around?). If he were around today, his projects would constantly be on HN.

I am curious to know if there's a gene for these incredibly driven, very intelligent people that also _finish projects_.

One of my lecturers at university (in information theory) once talked about the conference where he had met Shannon. Shannon was already a legend, and didn't show himself much, so there was a lot of whispering, and someone figured out it would be nice to have him deliver a speech at the dinner. The room was buzzing with anticipation when Shannon got up from his chair; what wisdom would he impart upon the crowd?

“I haven't prepared anything to say. But I could always juggle a bit.” So he took out five balls and showed off his juggling. And that was that :-)

(Interestingly, said lecturer also mentioned this Roman numeral computer; this is the only time I've seen an actual picture of it!)

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