The Most Powerful Computers You've Never Heard Of

Moore’s Law, the op-amp, and the Norden bombsight were filmed at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

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Written by Derek Muller, Stephen Welch and Emily Zhang
Filmed by Derek Muller, Emily Zhang and Raquel Nuno
Animation by Fabio Albertelli, Jakub Misiek, Mike Radjabov, Ivy Tello, Trenton Oliver
Edited by Derek Muller
Additional video supplied by Getty Images
Music from Epidemic Sound and Jonny Hyman
Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev and Emily Zhang

[EngineeringMindset]

I'm absolutely fascinated by these old mechanical computers. There was no software back then to design them, the device was designed within someone's imagination. Truly incredible.

[AlphaPhoenixChannel]

I exclaimed at my TV when you showed the rotary ball integrator. What a beautiful system!

[DaltonChannel]

The problem with analog computers
is that there will always be some slop in the connections between parts; the problem with digital computers is that always there will be cosmic particles to malfunction it. :-)

[colleenforrest]

My mom used to work on an analog computer in the 1940's. She worked in a comptometer office when they got this "new machine." She never called it a computer but as She described it my mouth nearly dropped. I was in college learning programming at the time and we had recently gone over the history of computing. She said it had a bunch of wires and plugs and dials and flashing lights. Her boss couldn't figure it out so he gave her the manual to figure it out.

[Erik-pumj]

This was astoundingly relevant to--almost a summary of--my History of Science: The Digital Age course, for which I have a final for tomorrow. This video is practically a 'further reading' section. Thank you for this.

[overwerk]

Your clarity and efforts are always appreciated. — When I see a new Veritasium video, I'm glued to my screen.

[Shadowfdath]

Chris from "Clickspring" is building an Antikytherean mechanism and has been building it using period tools and techniques to the best of the experts knowledge...the ww1/2 analog firing computers are still incredibly advanced and smartly built tbh. They are just insanely accurate for as little input as they take and what they can interpret and output for solutions

[JackpineGandy]

As a US Navy reactor operator of 60s-era nuke submarines, I am recalling that subs had a large number of analog computers, from bow to stern, so to speak. In my own training for my specialty, we were told of magnetic amplifiers (mag-amps) used in German gun directors, that still worked perfectly after being recovered from sunken ships. Part of my work was checking and correcting as needed, the micrometer settings of certain variable circuit components in a particular analog computer that was absolutely vital to the operation of a nuclear submarine engineering plant. In the meantime, we did manual calculations with a slide rule and graphs, to determine when the reactor should go critical. (all of these submarines were turned into razor blades decades ago, so no useful classified information is in this remark)

[fabioandrade]

The ball and disk integrator actually blew my mind. I cannot believe such a thing has existed and I only ever heard about it now. What a beautiful machine.

[salernolake]

When I was learning to be an engineer back in the early '70s, analog computers were on the way out the door. Large-scale integration was beginning, and Moore's Law was a new concept that my professor's predicted was going to revolutionize computers.

Fifty years later I am retired after a career in digital computing, and now I find that analog is making a comeback. I am looking forward to part 2; I know enough about analog computer that I can anticipate some of the application for which they will be useful. I suspect the improvements in electronics, and perhaps even 3D printing of components will produce new and sophisticated analog machines.

Makes me wish I was 20 again, so I could have a second career in analog!

Please keep making these videos - you are doing valuable work. 👍

[EEVblog]

I've done a teardown video of a B52 bomber astro compass analog computer and it's glorious how these thing can compute sinusoidals and do integration etc.

[karlschulte]

I used and helped develop analog computers in 1960's and early 70's. Gun aiming analog mechanical computers used gears and wheels . It considered ship vector and speed and distance to target. The disk/ball mechanism for integration mentioned were also part of it. Electronic ones used tube then transistor operational amplifiers with resistor input and feedback for aritmatic plus capacitor feedback for calculus anf special diode networks in input for trig. And so on. Moon landing simulator we made combined analog (to "think" ) and digitals with control for in/ out. Civil engineers and auto companies used analog pc's to optimize suspensions and roadside slope grading. Plotters as large as beds drew plans and curves far more accurate than primitive digitals. I used m9 in USAF.

[Texasbluesalley]

This is my favorite of all the videos you've ever done.

[victoreijkhout]

As a total software person I find these mechanical devices so fascinating and clever. Those people coming up with them were geniuses.

[codediporpal]

4:15 It's pretty mind boggling that a telegraph cable was laid across the Atlantic ocean in the 1850's. I'd love to learn the details of that endeavor someday.

[DashFlashTheLife]

It's so crazy how adding or multiplying sine waves, something that's as simple as punching values into a calculator today, used to require some unbelievable engineering. I mean, just the notion of such an advanced mechanical computer makes my head hurt. The things we do today would be seen as magic many years ago. Great video!

[arfloctions]

So Lord Kelvin was the first guy to think of a system to compute the FFT! How come I never heard about this in engineering school. Before DFTs and FFTs, there existed AFT (Analog Fourier Transform). Mind blown...🤯. And what an elegant construction. These concepts should be used to teach mathematics and engineering in STEM. The genesis of the thinking behind any mathematical and engineering breakthrough goes way beyond equations and has real world analogies that are much easier to understand. Brilliant video. Thanks for everything you do, Veritasium. 🎉🙏🏽

[martinstent]

My physics teacher used to tell us that digital computers would never catch on because of their limited accuracy, and those analog computers were going to be big. That was in the UK in the 1960s. Since then, I have been laughing about that and thinking “How wrong can you be!!”. But, well, maybe he knew something… let’s wait and see.

[logannearhood]

I dropped out of school, regrettably, but whenever I find your channel while scrolling, I always seem to pay more attention than I did in school. You've taught me more than most of the people who were paid to teach me, and for that I appreciate you V, keep up the good work!

[mstalcup]

This presentation, on this channel, may be my all-time favorite. As a software engineer, I am blown away and humbled by the innovations of people like Lord Kelvin. I absolutely loved the organization and flow of this presentation.