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A long, long time ago - possibly more than a decade - I stumbled
across an old manual on mechanical computers, which were used
for fire control systems back in the forties.
I changed my laptop at least twice since, and even if I
*probably* still have that file, I have no idea where that might
be.
Today, I found it again, almost by accident, when clicking on a
Wikipedia link gave me the magic words I needed for Google to
find it again: it was /Basic Fire Control Mechanisms/, OP 1140,
from 1944, and it's available online from at least two
locations.
I can barely wrap my head around the basic components described
in Section 2, and they are of course impressively impractical,
but also fascinating. Need to implement the trigonometric
functions in hardware? Just cut the right groove into a cam!
And don't worry if your computer is starting to look like a
dieselpunk torture devices, those are just multipliers and
integrators!
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