OT: a wooden computer (almost)

Jun 22, 2007 12 Replies
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Just found this

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martin


I'll see your wooden computer and raise you:

Impressive. It's good to see Big companies having a sense sense of fun on their websites

As soon as I hit send, I realised I should have called the post "gravity based computing", so no good for the ISS !

martin

And in case some of you have missed it:

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Regards,

-=Dave

Sorry to tell you that series got canned (I think). The reason I knew about the HRRG is because I proofread the first one or two articles. (I also write for developerWorks; you'll find probably 20 of my articles up there). Unfortunately they had a budget cut recently, which forced all the zones to focus on specific topics. That's why I'm now writing only about Cell BE programming; if you search for my name you'll find a lot of older material I wrote which is general fun and interest.

OTOH

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Nvidia claimed it can run 518 billion floating-point operations every second.

martin

On the island of Apraphul off the northwest coast of New Guinea, archaeologists discovered the rotting remnants of an ingenious arrangement of ropes and pulleys thought to be the first working digital computer ever constructed ... approximately A.D. 850.

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Guy Macon

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And doesn't "Apraphul" sound remarkably like "April fool"? (The article appeared in Scientific American, April 1988.)

martin

Next you are going to tell me that I can't trust the Weekly World News...

I know.... I did an april fools for Studio Sound ( uk pub.) in the

80's, it was so convincing not one person spotted it, wish I still had a copy.

But that Tesla thing looks impressive, and I did check the publication date before posting, maybe I should email it to that Skybuck

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person, just for fun, of course

martin

Surely that is redated by the abacus for that particular accolade?

Andrew Smallshaw andrews@sdf.lonestar.org

fri22Jun2007 martin griffith wrote: | On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:21:29 +0000, in comp.arch.embedded Guy Macon | wrote: | >On the island of Apraphul off the northwest coast of New Guinea, | >archaeologists discovered the rotting remnants of an ingenious | >arrangement of ropes and pulleys thought to be the first working | >digital computer ever constructed ... approximately A.D. 850. | >

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| | And doesn't "Apraphul" sound remarkably like "April fool"? | (The article appeared in Scientific American, April 1988.)

I thought it sounded a wee bit tooooo similar to current technology tendancies (8-bit, etc). The elephant bones pretty much sealed my doubts. Neat story though. :)

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