Difference between revisions of "Analog Computer"
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| + | When digital computers learned to shrink their geometries on a chip of silicon, they rapidly overtook the clunky old analog computers<ref>Charles Platt, ''Back to the Analog Future'' Wired 2023-05) https://www.wired.com/story/unbelievable-zombie-comeback-analog-computing/</ref> | ||
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Revision as of 10:18, 10 May 2023
Contents
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 than 20 watts of analog tissue in the human brain. And that brain consumes a large fraction of the power needed by a human body. For the average adult in a resting state, the brain consumes about 20 percent of the body’s energy.[2] Far more than any other animal. Artificial Intelligence as presently constituted is unsustainable. And other features of modern life, like crypto currencies, are even worse energy hogs.
Back to the Future
When digital computers learned to shrink their geometries on a chip of silicon, they rapidly overtook the clunky old analog computers[3]
References
- ↑ Bernd Ulmann, AN/FSQ-7: the computer that shaped the Cold War ISBN 9783486727661
- ↑ How Much Energy Does the Brain Use? (2019-02-01) https://www.brainfacts.org/Brain-Anatomy-and-Function/Anatomy/2019/How-Much-Energy-Does-the-Brain-Use-020119
- ↑ Charles Platt, Back to the Analog Future Wired 2023-05) https://www.wired.com/story/unbelievable-zombie-comeback-analog-computing/
