A Multi-Stranded Chronology of Analogue Computing

Care, Charles

doi:10.1007/978-1-84882-948-0_2

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…11 This work investigated how to advance the design of integrator mechanisms and fit them for tasks more complex than mere numerical calculating machines, and was extremely important in the development of analogue computing. 12 His paper on a similar topic, also in 1885, 'Mechanical integrators' published in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (Vol. LXXX11: 75) won him the Watt Gold Medal and Telford Premium.…”

Section: Early Life 1854−1884mentioning

confidence: 99%

Henry Selby Hele-Shaw LLD, DSc, EngD, FRS, WhSch (1854-1941): Engineer, inventor and educationist

Carruthers

2010

S. Afr. J. Sci

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H.S. Hele-Shaw (1854–1941) was one of the most outstanding engineering scientists of his generation and an eminent figure in engineering education during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. His work in hydrodynamics (the Hele-Shaw cell and Hele-Shaw pump) and his important contribution to the successful development of high-speed aircraft (his variable pitch airscrew), continues to be relevant today. In 1922, as President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, he introduced the National Certificate scheme in Britain. It is not well known that Hele-Shaw spent two years in South Africa (1904–1905) attached to the Transvaal Technical Institute, a forerunner of the University of the Witwatersrand. One of only three Fellows of the Royal Society of London in southern Africa in 1905, he was a founder Council member of the Royal Society of South Africa and one of the hosts of the 1905 visit to southern Africa by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the time he spent in South Africa and to contextualise it within the larger perspective of his engineering career.

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Section: Early Life 1854−1884mentioning

confidence: 99%

Henry Selby Hele-Shaw LLD, DSc, EngD, FRS, WhSch (1854-1941): Engineer, inventor and educationist

Carruthers

2010

S. Afr. J. Sci

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“…Analogy and metaphor are important here, and the almost-forgotten field of Analogue Computing offers us an intriguing perspective. By "build[ing] models that created a mapping between two physical phenomena" [7], some analogue computers effectively operated as 'direct' displays of an analogue of the 'original' phenomenon-a kind of meta-level 2 type qualitative display, with devices such as the 1949 Phillips Machine [4] (Figure 9), which performed operations on flows of coloured water to model the economy of a country, enabling an interactive visualization of a system in operation as it operates (there are parallels with Bret Victor and Nicky Case's work on explorable explanations [38,8], and the development of visual programming languages).…”

Section: A Spectrum Of Qualitative Displaysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Qualitative Displays and Interfaces

Lockton

Ricketts

Chowdhury

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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Much of how we construct meaning in the real world is qualitative rather than quantitative. We think and act in response to, and in dialogue with, qualities of phenomena, and relationships between them. Yet, quantification has become a default mode for information display, and for interfaces supporting decision-making and behaviour change. There are more opportunities within HCI for qualitative displays and interfaces, for information presentation, and an aid to help people explore their own thinking and relationships with ideas. Here we attempt one dimension of a tentative classification to support projects exploring opportunities for qualitative displays within design.

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“…Comrie was decrying a rich tradition of building highly specialized devices that served as physical analogues allowing the solution to problems not otherwise tractable (Care 2006;Mindell 2002;Owens 1986). Such computers were "analog" in two senses: they measured continuous quantities directly and they were "analogous" to other physical phenomena.…”

Section: Analog Computingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Calculating Devices and Computers

Jones¹

2016

A Companion to the History of Science

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Focusing upon computation, storage, and infrastructures for data from the early modern European period forward, this chapter stresses that the constraints of computing technologies, as well as their possibilities, are essential for the path of computational sciences. Mathematical tables and simple contrivances aided calculation well into the middle of the twentieth century. Digital machines replaced them slowly: adopting electronic digital computers for scientific work demanded creative responses to the limits of technologies of computation, storage, and communication. Transforming the evidence of existing scientific domains into data computable and storable in electronic form challenged ontology and practice alike. The ideational history of computing should pay close attention to its materiality and social forms, and the materialist history of computing must pay attention to its algorithmic ingenuity in the face of material constraints.

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A Multi-Stranded Chronology of Analogue Computing

Cited by 6 publications

References 46 publications

Henry Selby Hele-Shaw LLD, DSc, EngD, FRS, WhSch (1854-1941): Engineer, inventor and educationist

Henry Selby Hele-Shaw LLD, DSc, EngD, FRS, WhSch (1854-1941): Engineer, inventor and educationist

Exploring Qualitative Displays and Interfaces

Calculating Devices and Computers

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