Designing a Mechanical Calculator | Hacker News Reader

Designing a Mechanical Calculator

signoregalilei.com

33 pointssurprisetalk11 comments

Reminds me of the purely mechanical computer Z1 with 16-word floating point memory, Keyboard and punch card reader: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer)

Would be interesting to reconstruct that using a 3D printer... if anyone has too mich time to spare.

The German Wikipedia page[1] about the Z1 also contains a quote from Kurt Pannke, who Zuse told about his plans for the computer.

"Oh, Mr Zuse, there is absolutely nothing left to invent in the field of calculating machines. But you are a nice young engineer, I'll give you 1,500 Reichsmarks and when you have come up with something, show it to me." (Translated by Deepl)

I like the "640K ought to be enough" vibe of that statement :)

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(Rechner)#:~:text=Ach%2C%20...

An assembled version would sell like hotcakes.

There are probably designs that are more print-friendly than gears (rod logic?). I wonder how far you could go with just a 3D printer if you really optimize for the efficiency.

Maybe have a look at the Curta for inspiration of a mechanical calculator. There's a 3D printable version of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9uRckJLqLk https://wudev.digitaltorque.com/articles/curta-1/

Curta is over complicated. I eould rather focus on a design thats easily made with plywood and common wood tools.

Complex, but as far as mechanical calculators go AFAIK not over complicated. Or is there a simpler mechanical calculator design that packs the same functionality in such a handy package?

I would forgo handy package part. I think someone built a 3d printed Curta and it turned out 3-4 times the size of the original so much for being "handy". Maybe we should try a Odhner or Brunsviga or some other design.

He mentions curta in the fourth paragraph, and also having a simple design as one of the goals.

I feel there is very little calculation going on in the design. To be useful like pascaline you'd need at least some convenient way to input numbers.

This looks like a really fiddly way to re-invent the odometer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com