Friends who have seen "The Three-Body Problem" must remember the famous scene - von Neumann asked Qin Shi Huang to arrange a human column calculator composed of 30 million soldiers. Signals displayed by soldiers raising black and white flags replace binary calculations.
The picture is from the screenshot of the "Three-Body Problem" TV series
Take it easy! You don't need to understand OR and OR logic gate circuits right now. Let's go big and look at the basic structure of the computer's hardware system.
Take the hardware parts of a modern calculator to concrete, you can make a good correspondence.
Input devices, such as mice, keyboards, etc.;
Controllers and combinators are often collectively referred to as central processing units, that is, CPU (Central Processing Unit), etc.;
Memory, as the name suggests, is what we often call memory sticks and hard disks, etc.;
Output devices, monitors, printers, speakers, etc.
This hardware composition system is known as the von Neumann system, and was created by the mathematician. But it was not his imagination, but the experience of his predecessors. Because, before the popularization of electronic calculators, there was also an era of manual calculators and mechanical calculators. Von Neumann also followed the creation rule of "path dependence", referred to as stepping on the shoulders of giants. Next, let's find out.
Friend, please give an example of a calculator, if it comes to your mind immediately!
I think most people will have an electronic calculator that looks like the one below, charged and can calculate automatically. Just use the key to enter the data and algorithms, and the result will be automatically output to an electronic screen. It is so common that it is inconspicuous...
Copyright images in the gallery are not authorized to be reproduced
If you happen to watch some costume dramas recently, you should still think of crackling abacus. The calculation process relies on the abacus that our human brains memorize the abacus recipe, and the changes in the arrangement of the abacus show the results of the storage. This category belongs to manual calculators and cannot do automatic calculations.
Copyright images in the gallery are not authorized to be reproduced
Don't sell anymore. In this article, we'll talk about mechanical calculators in between.
01
The modern figure of a mechanical calculator
The representative of the first industrial revolution was to replace human and animal power with machines, and human beings entered the machine age. The representative of the second industrial revolution is the large-scale application of electricity, and we have entered the age of electricity. Now we are in the third industrial revolution, all kinds of information technology and scientific and technological innovation brought by modern convenience, to put it more bluntly, we are in an era where you can't understand the principle of things at a glance.
The development of calculators is also developing with the above trend of the times, going through three stages, from manual calculators to electronic calculators, which have also experienced the stage of mechanical calculators. It's just that this stage has been "changing with each passing day", and even makes people feel as if it has never been shown in front of us? After all, when friends under the age of forty are born, all the items around them are electrified... I'm talking about electricity.
However, in fact, all of us are surrounded by the familiar figure of mechanical computers. If you don't believe it, come and see?
02
Mechanical calculator for later periods
Let's first look at the Divisumma 24, a relatively late machine in the era of mechanical calculators, which can quickly add, subtract, multiply, and divide at a speed of 250 cycles per minute. The machine, designed by Marcello Nizzoli, began mass production in Italy in September 1963 by the company Olivetti. The reason for its introduction is that this mechanical calculator was successful enough in the market in the seventies of the last century - about 6 million units were produced, and it is also the company's most sold mechanical calculator model in the world.
Because it is a relatively late product of the mechanical calculator period, this mechanical calculator is not a completely pure mechanical design, and needs to be driven by a 70-watt worm motor on the far right of the figure below. There are no circuit boards or sensors inside the whole machine, and there are no modern components that are so high-tech that people can't understand. In some cases, there are only about 3,800 mechanical parts such as gears, springs, and linkages, working together to complete the work. This also shows that in the era of its brilliant appearance, such a level of mechanical craftsmanship has reached its peak.
Image courtesy of Multyplus1
When operating, we only need to enter the number to be calculated, and then the different stages of the calculation and the output result will be divided into two different colors of ink and printed on a roll of paper tape above the machine. In the figure below, we can perceive the calculation speed of this mechanical calculator under different algorithms by observing the calculation time of the machine. For example, 12 plus 45, the calculation result of this 57 is output to the paper tape almost immediately. The result of the 45 times 78 operation, 3510, needs to pause for a while.
The following video is an assembly video of the Divisumma 24 in 1962, which was recorded and used to train the factory's assemblers. The assembly of 3800 parts, even a modern person of the twenty-first century, cannot understand without pain ... I can't help but sigh "What kind of mind can design such a thing".
Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BkQ-hfcLEg
03
Similar typewriters
Seeing this, have you found that this mechanical calculator seems to have some similarities with a typewriter? The same key pressed down as input, the same paper tape typing output. Name your bold speculation? Yes, they are indeed the same in design! When engineer Camillo Olivetti first started the surname company Olivetti in 1908, he first produced typewriters.
Let's take a look at the Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter produced by this same company in the 1950s, one of the most iconic typewriters of the era, and in 1959 was selected by the Illinois Institute of Technology as the best design product of the past 100 years. The typewriter was also designed by Marcello Nizzoli, the designer of the Divisumma 24 mechanical calculator, and if you have the chance to visit MoMA in New York, the Museum of Modern Art, you can also see this permanent collection.
Image by YEGTypewriters
04
Design convergence
Such similar designs are related to a phenomenon in design methods - design convergence. Sometimes in order to reduce the cognitive cost of users and quickly adapt to a new product, some functions and layouts of commercial design will show convergence. In addition, this also reduces the pressure on designers to innovate, and also reduces the burden of mold opening and assembly by workers for high-volume production in factories. It can be said that the predecessors in the history of design planted trees, and the descendants took advantage of the cool.
It is precisely because of the convergence of design that even the whimsy that has been gradually eliminated by the rapid development of science and technology can no longer tell who imitated whom, but the former technical relics can always be unearthed. Today, mechanical typewriters like the one pictured above are rarely used, but isn't the text on the keyboard and monitor I'm typing continue to be traced in the world in another form of an electronic computer?
05
Early mechanical calculators
We have seen the later mechanical calculator and were struck by its exquisite structure, so let's take a look at an early mechanical calculator to calm down. More than 300 years back, a roller-type adder invented by Blaise Pascal in 1642, also known as the Pascal calculator. This mechanical calculator can directly add and subtract two numbers.
That year, the inventor was only 19 years old, and the intention was only to lighten the workload of his father as a tax collector. Isn't the name Pascal familiar? Pa, the unit of pressure we learned in junior high school science class, is also named after him for his outstanding contributions. This is an outstanding mathematician, physicist, chemist, meteorologist in the history of science ...
Looking at the practice shown below, I am moving the dial below to enter two numbers in turn, to perform addition or subtraction operations.
Image by Yves Serra
Simply look at the internal principle of a coupling mechanism in a separate turntable.
Image by Colegiul Economic Ion Ghica
The linkage between different turntables is that when the value of a turntable reaches 10, that is, after one turn, this tooth will drive the second gear to complete the rise.
06
Do the addition of the water meter
You should be very familiar with this small mechanical structure of the ascending position. The water meter, in fact, is a mechanical addition calculator still in use in the twenty-first century, but now it automatically calculates the water consumption of your home.
Let's look at the lower layer of a speed meter after disassembly, and find the diagram from the simulation data of fluid dynamics. The so-called speed water meter is the mechanical structure to calculate how much water you use through the speed of the water flow. The balls that simulate the flow of water are first passed through the filter screen and then pushed to rotate the impeller in the cavity.
Image by Tintschl BESt AG (English)
The coaxial gears on the impeller extend to the upper layer of the water meter. This is a complete set of reduction gears. They then drive the reading tray, stepping into the display to do the addition. The same is the rotation of the latter turntable to complete a carry. It can be said that gears have become the heart of such mechanical equipment.
Image courtesy of Tech & Lifestyle
A brief overview of the first and last machines of the mechanical calculator stage. We will find that the biggest limitation of the development of such machines is already the material itself, and the quality of the mechanical parts itself makes assembly and design extremely complicated. But it is precisely because of the complexity of the mechanical structure that the mechanical calculator is given a high appreciation value, which may be the reason why people are obsessed with the sci-fi theme of "steampunk". Fortunately, our lives will always be based on the wisdom of the past, but in a different form of expression.
Bibliography:
[1]http://www.marcello-nizzoli.com/
[2]https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_690100
[3] Books "01 Changing the World" and "Operations Research and Ingenuity: The History of the Invention of the Mechanical Computer"
Author|Zhang Jinmiao Master of Practical Design from Goldsmiths College, University of London
Review|Wang Yangzong is a professor at the School of Humanities, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences