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Tide-Predicting Machine No. 2, also known as Old Brass Brains, [1] was a special-purpose mechanical computer that uses gears, pulleys, chains, and other mechanical components to compute the height and time of high and low tides for specific locations. The machine can perform tide calculations much faster than a person could do with pencil and ...
The first tide predicting machine (TPM) was built in 1872 by the Légé Engineering Company. [11] A model of it was exhibited at the British Association meeting in 1873 [12] (for computing 8 tidal components), followed in 1875-76 by a machine on a slightly larger scale (for computing 10 tidal components), was designed by Sir William Thomson (who later became Lord Kelvin). [13]
Joining the newly founded Tidal Institute in Liverpool in 1919 he produced tide tables, and was involved in designing tide-predicting machines. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. During WWII he calculated the best combination of full moon and ideal tidal conditions for D-Day on 6 June 1944.
The original machines could not add, but then it was noticed that if the two wheels of a rear differential are turned, the drive shaft will compute the average of the left and right wheels. Addition and subtraction are then achieved by using a simple gear ratio of 1:2; the gear ratio provides multiplication by two, and multiplying the average ...
Another influence was Lord Kelvin's tide-predicting machine, an analog computer completed in 1873. [15] Steele hired Donald Eckdahl, Hrant (Harold) Sarkinssian, and Richard Sprague to work on the MADDIDA's germanium diode logic circuits and also to do magnetic recording. [16] Together, this group developed the MADDIDA prototype between 1946 and ...
The first modern analog computer was a tide-predicting machine, invented by Sir William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, in 1872. It used a system of pulleys and wires to automatically calculate predicted tide levels for a set period at a particular location and was of great utility to navigation in shallow waters.
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The main result was the building of a tide-predicting machine using a system of pulleys to add together six harmonic time functions. It was "programmed" by resetting gears and chains to adjust phasing and amplitudes. Similar machines were used until the 1960s. [42]