Difference between revisions of "Analog Computer"

Revision as of 13:54, 28 April 2023

Full Title or Meme

While the word computer in 2020 implies digital computer, the first useful computers were analog.

Context

The first portable computer was a slide rule, which all engineers were required to master.

The first (non-human) military computers were analog fire control on the battleship Missouri and bomb-sights on aircraft during the Second World War.

Bernd Ulmann, Analog Computing 2nd Extended ed. Edition de Gruyter Textbook) ISBN 978-3110787610

The First Network

In the late 1950s, a sophisticated continental air defense system was developed by the United States Air Force to protect North America from incoming Soviet nuclear bombers. The name of the system was SAGE - the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment. SAGE was a massive technical complex of 23 concrete bunkers in the U.S. and (one) in Canada, each connected to local and distant radar stations and controlled by the largest computer system of its day.^[1]

The AN/FSQ-7 analog computer had already anticipated many techniques, which appeared only later in commercially available computers: modem, screen pen, graphics, etc.

Problems

• Artificial Intelligence runs on megabytes with megawatts in digital computer mega-centers. Natural intelligence runs on less that 20 watts of analog tissue. Artificial Intelligence as presently constituted is unsustainable.

Back to the Future

1. ↑ Bernd Ulmann, AN/FSQ-7: the computer that shaped the Cold War ISBN 9783486727661