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THE VIDEO SHELF · mechanical analog computers

U.S. NAVY BASIC MECHANISMS OF FIRE CONTROL COMPUTERS MECHANICAL COMPUTER INSTRUCTIONAL FILM 27794

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.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN treats it as the classic demonstration of how analog mechanical computation works, especially the differential gear section.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
PeriscopeFilm
Topic
mechanical analog computers
Format
tutorial
Level
intermediate
HN recommenders in dataset
11
HN mentions in dataset
17
Recommendation years in dataset
2018–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

  • Two gems (among many)... Periscope Films (on YouTube): [LINK] Digitized 40-60s era reels. It still amazes me how effectively they presented complex topics then. E.g. mechanical naval gunnery computers: [VIDEO] And this on-the-ground movie on the Columbia student occupation in 1968: [LINK]

    ethbr1 on Hacker News · 2023-11
    In Lost Doctor Who episodes found but owner is reluctant to hand them to BBC

  • You might like this video about the US Navy fire control computer. Mechanical yet also programmable. Eg with cam-based calculation modules like 1/x or differential gearings to perform addition : [VIDEO]

    jeffwass on Hacker News · 2018-08
    In Tide-Predicting Machine No. 2

  • If you want more information on how you can do computation with mechanical systems, try this video: U.S. NAVY BASIC MECHANISMS OF FIRE CONTROL COMPUTERS MECHANICAL COMPUTER INSTRUCTIONAL FILM 27794 [VIDEO]

    Scaevolus on Hacker News · 2019-09
    In UCLA’s 1948 Mechanical Computer [video]

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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