Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Binary Adding Machine

It's made of wood:

Cool machine, made from wood by Matthias Wandel. More details about the machine can be found here, or discover other marble machines by Matthias.

Watch this video -- it's fascinating.

This is particularly interesting to me.  I'm taking my first computer science course this summer and am currently working my way through Brookshear's Computer Science: An Overview.  It's neat to see how computation can be done not only electronically, but mechanically as well.

Of course, you don't need wood to make something like this.  You could also make it out of Lego.  

The original concept for a mechanical calculating machine goes to Charles Babbage.

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