analog computers

Veritasium explains why analog computing may suit AI workloads, covering old analog computers, The Analog Thing and Mythic's analog chips that use flash memory for neural network inference. It argues digital hardware is hitting limits.

A 1953 US Navy training film explaining the basic mechanisms in mechanical fire control computers aboard ships. It shows how gears, differentials and cams solved mathematical problems in permanent mechanical form.

Veritasium traces analog computers from the Antikythera mechanism and Kelvin's tide-predicting machines to fire control and modern analog approaches. It explains how these machines computed continuously rather than digitally.

A 1953 US Navy training film on the basic mechanisms in fire control computers: shafts, gears, cams and differentials. It shows how these mechanical parts compute ship and target firing solutions.

Douglas Hofstadter's Stanford Presidential Lecture argues that analogy is the core of cognition, illustrating how concepts, categorization and thought arise from analogy-making.

Ben Heck modifies a keyboard with magnets, Hall effect sensors and an Xbox controller so the WASD keys give analog control. He walks through the hardware build.

Technology Connections explains how analog television produced moving images without computers, covering scanning, CRTs and standards like NTSC and PAL. It is part of a series on analog TV.

Technology Connections shows a cheap method for capturing analog video: a composite-to-HDMI upscaler feeding an HDMI capture dongle, aimed at digitizing home movies and VHS tapes.

Technology Connections explains the early history of analog color television, from the 1954 start of modern color broadcasting, and how shadow masks work in CRTs. It is the first in a series on how analog color TV works.

A lecture by Richard Feynman on how computers work, using the analogy of a filing clerk that becomes progressively dumber and faster. It also covers heuristics and how computers handle data and solve problems in finite time.

A short clip of Steve Jobs describing the computer as a bicycle for the mind. He compares human efficiency of travel to what computers do for mental work.

Bill Hammack of engineerguy uses slow motion video to show how the IBM Selectric typewriter works. He focuses on its fully mechanical digital-to-analog converter, which turns key presses into rotation of the type ball.

A PBS Infinite Series episode explaining the mathematics of quantum computers, including how qubits store complex numbers and how quantum computation differs from classical computation. Hosted by Kelsey Houston-Edwards.

A Strange Loop 2019 talk by Aaron Cummings on the computing systems aboard Voyager 1 and 2, which control the spacecraft and record and return data decades after launch in 1977.

Douglas Hofstadter lectures at Uppsala University on how analogy and daring thinking drove Einstein's discovery of light quanta. He argues deep insight in physics comes from imaginative leaps rather than rigid logic.

A short demonstration of the MONIAC, Bill Phillips' hydro-mechanical economic computer, at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand museum. It shows how water flows model an economy's money flows.

An episode of REACT in which children try to figure out 1970s-1980s computers, including an Apple II and floppy disks. It was made to promote the AMC show Halt and Catch Fire.

A short clip of Steve Jobs at the D8 conference discussing the post-PC era, including his analogy of PCs as trucks that will remain for a minority of users.

Dave Jones of EEVblog tears down a Kollsman MD-1 Automatic Astro Compass, a mechanical analog computer from a B-52 bomber. It is part of a star-tracker inertial navigation system that computes altitude and azimuth.

A short animation from Thames Valley Police that explains sexual consent by comparing it to offering someone a cup of tea.

A short explainer on the history and mechanics of public key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. It uses a mixing-paint-colors analogy to show how two parties can agree on a shared secret in public.

A Technology Connections video essay on how analog and digital clocks shape different mental models of time, with the minute hand acting as a progress indicator.

The opening episode of Ted Nelson's Computers for Cynics series, in which he casts doubt on conventional accounts of computer basics. He argues that conventions and packaging are mistaken for technology.

MinutePhysics explains Shor's algorithm, showing how a quantum computer factors large integers by finding the period of a number modulo N. It walks through the modular arithmetic and number theory that give the exponential speedup over classical factoring, and why this threatens encryption.

A three-minute animated video that explains sexual consent through the analogy of offering someone a cup of tea. It is based on a blog post by Emmeline May.

Hartverdrahtet by Akronyme Analogiker, the winning PC 4k intro at Revision 2012. It is a realtime demo with music and fractal visuals in 4096 bytes.

Ben Eater explains why he builds computers on breadboards, including testing their signal behavior on an oscilloscope. It is a companion to his 6502 breadboard computer series.

LGR looks at the 1988 Canon Xap Shot, a still video camera that records photos to a floppy disk as analog NTSC signal rather than digital data.

Steve Mould shows Spintronics, a set of mechanical components such as resistors, capacitors and transistors linked by chains, that give an intuitive feel for how electrical circuits work.

Ted Nelson, in his Computers for Cynics series, gives a critical history of Xerox PARC's vision of personal computing. He lists what he sees as the limitations and wrong turns in PARC's approach to the desktop and documents.

A three-minute clip of Richard Feynman using the rules of chess as an analogy for how science works, discovering rules by observation and sometimes meeting surprises like castling. It touches on incremental progress versus revolutions.

Jason Turner's CppCon 2016 talk builds a simple Commodore 64 game using C++17, showing how constexpr and const let a modern compiler produce tight 6502 code. He walks through assembly output to show abstractions being optimized away.

ScienceClic explains why the rubber sheet analogy for general relativity is misleading and offers a new visualization that includes the curvature of time and shows gravity as motion through curved spacetime.

The first of four short videos from Bill Hammack (engineerguy) introducing and giving the history of a 100-year-old mechanical computer, Michelson's harmonic analyzer. The series goes on to explain Fourier synthesis, analysis and operation of the machine.

A 1982 AT&T Bell Labs film for students about the Unix system and how it can be used practically. It includes Lorinda Cherry building a talking calculator by piping together Unix commands, and a spell checker made from Unix utilities.

Daniel Dennett's Royal Institution lecture on whether the brain is a computer and where its software comes from. He argues that minds are built by evolution and culture, with competence arising without comprehension.

A short demo of a walking droplet on a vibrating silicone oil bath passing through a double slit and producing interference, a macro-scale analogue of pilot-wave behavior.

An eight-minute excerpt of a 1983 video featuring Seymour Papert, creator of Logo, on children learning programming and abstract ideas through embodied play. It shows kids acting out the Logo turtle.

Matthias Wandel tests old and new code on a range of PCs, including a new mini PC, to measure how much faster modern hardware really is. He also shows optimization techniques such as branchless code, with benchmark programs on GitHub.

A short Art of the Problem clip explaining Diffie-Hellman key exchange, using a paint mixing analogy for one-way functions and touching on modular arithmetic and discrete logarithms.