What you're describing with the cams on that old mechanical computer sounds an awful lot like the WWII Enigma cypher machine the Wehrmacht used and many movies were made highlighting the Allies successful aquisition of it. If I remember correctly, that machine "created" codes by the movement (from a keystroke) of a cam inside the machine.
Steve Weinstein S/V CAPTIVA 1997 Hunter 376, Hull #376 Sailing out of Oyster Bay, NY All outgoing mail protected by VIPRE A/V ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 2:07 PM Subject: Re: [Liveaboard] Unnecessary Beads > > > When I was in the USAF I went to school on a doppler nav system. It shot > three beams of radar down to the ground and measured the doppler shift for > speed of travel and had a mechanical analog computer. It didn't last long > because the radar beams violated radio silence or so we were told. > > But the mechanical computer was magnificent, full of gears and mechanical > differentials for intregating data. > > As for the cam: for inputting compass variation a cam about the size of > kiwi fruit was used. The cam rotated around it's shaft axis for longitide > and the cam follower moved parellel with the cam's shaft for latitude. > The > distance from the cam's shaft to the follower (radius of the cam) varied > to > read off variation. > > > Norm > S/V Bandersnatch > Lying Julington Creek FL > N30 07.68 W081 38.47 > > > >> Right... the only place I've seen those (IBM tabulators, as I recall) >> was in a museum of computing, somewhere in California. They also had a >> mechanical computer that used a beautifully shaped cam for integration; >> just great stuff, branches of development we ended up not following >> because electrons were so much easier to juggle. >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Liveaboard mailing list > [email protected] > To adjust your membership settings over the web > http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard > To subscribe send an email to [email protected] > > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ > > To search the archives > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] > > The Mailman Users Guide can be found here > http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
