Plastic mechanical computer from 1963: The Digi-Comp 1 [video] | Hacker News Reader

Plastic mechanical computer from 1963: The Digi-Comp 1 [video]

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84 pointstobr20 comments

It's cool to see Chris Staecker's channel getting some love, he brings a a kind of joy I miss from the old internet. I know it's still around, but it certainly feels more difficult to find and suppressed in many ways.

I think the algorithm recommended Chris to me because of his topology videos, and from there I watched all his "old computing devices" stuff. Something about the Boston accent, the dry humor, and the occasional audio jump-cut make his stuff quite funny.

3D print your own: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1477209

This reminds me, a CNC wire bender is on my list.

I had one! One of my favorite possessions in elementary school. It came with a nice booklet introducing the theory. Because I studied that booklet, I was probably the only brat in my 2nd grade who knew about number bases. I entertained myself by converting decimal numbers into binary.

Reproductions are still produced, see the wikipedia page.

Details on how it works and similarity to FPGA at "Retrocmp" site; DIGI-COMP I - https://retrocmp.com/articles/digi-comp-1

Jörg's automation of the machine is truly fun :) The mechanics of the machine are really clunky and giving it an external clock made it function so much more smoothly iirc.

I am still not clear on how exactly it works :-( Need to read some more and maybe sit with pen/paper to see how it can calculate and/or evaluate some logic conditionals.

Computers are mainstream but the concepts behind computing are still "magic" to most. We automatically assume that it can only be realized in the current complicated form (microchips/architecture layers etc.) and forget that the concept is just a "machine" which you can build in many different forms.

Leonardo da Vinci himself had a design for a mechanical calculator - https://www.educalc.net/page/197481/ and http://www.computer-timeline.com/timeline/leonardo-da-vinci/

I still have my Digi-Comp I, as well as Dr. Nim and Think-a-Dot.

I had a CARDIAC when I was young.

Still got it? Would be pretty neat to bust out of the attic ..

Well.... https://www.instructables.com/CARDIAC-CARDboard-Illustrative...

There is an enthusiast discussion group at

https://groups.io/g/DIGI-COMP/topics

I bought one of these from Edmund Scientific when I was a kid. I wasn't able to figure out how it worked. I've thought about it occasionally over the years. Enjoyed the video

Wait til you see the DigiComp II! It has flip-flops driven by marbles and gravity. Truly astounding.

It looks amazing! Thanks for mentioning it!

I learned binary computing from that machine.

Really cool! Will we ever construct Babbage's Analytical Engine?

There was a (stalled) recent attempt: https://blog.plan28.org/?m=1

Wow. didn't know mechanical computers could be so simple.

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