

The 70-Year-Old Computer That Runs on Water - aethertap
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/tech-time-warp-week-70-year-old-computer-runs-water

======
anovikov
These machines were invented in Soviet union ca. 1930 and were in mass
production until 1980, and only went into total disuse and were scrapped when
perestroika began and brought smuggled used IBM XTs along with it. For many
tasks, with the level of Soviet per hour tech workers pay and level of
technology, they were more efficient than all Soviet pre-microprocessor
digital computers and some early microprocessor-based ones. All thermal and
mechanical simulations for construction engineering purposes were successfully
ran on them.

As for the economic tasks i don't know, i don't think it could work the the
soviet economy - where imbalances weren't necessarily cancelling themselves
and were frequently kept with a purpose, or just stayed because there was no
force motivated to fix. But logically, market economy resembles connected
volumes with liquid of various level difference and hydraulic resistance and
can be described with same equations, so in the West it probably worked very
well.

