
A Do-It-Yourself paper digital computer (1959) - ColinWright
https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2010/11/a-do-it-yourself-paper-digital-computer-1959.html
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spicybright
Reminds me of the Digicomp 1!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi-
Comp_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi-Comp_I)

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bregma
If I had found one of those when I was a kid I would have been in heaven.

What I did have was a CARDIAC [0] computer. I found it when I was 10 (this
would have been in the early 1970s) and it turned me on to programming. I
still have it, although some memory cells are burned out (too many erasures)
and I tried building larger, more complicated variants with extended
instruction sets.

[0]
[https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.html](https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/museum/cardiac.html)

~~~
raphlinus
I also had a CARDIAC, but on top of that I had a series of computers starting
with KIM-1 (6502) and SDK-85 (8085, which was Intel's answer to the Z80 at the
time). Fun times, and I think we've lost something since then.

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shakna
Reminds me a lot of the marble calculator [0], though with far more moving
(and fragile) parts.

[0] [https://lapinozz.github.io/learning/2016/11/19/calculator-
wi...](https://lapinozz.github.io/learning/2016/11/19/calculator-with-
caordboard-and-marbles.html)

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hanslub42
This kind of computer might be just what we need for a Venus rover

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6933](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6933)

~~~
avian
Electronics are still more likely I think.

Some sources claim [1] that even in the 1980s the Venera program had developed
circuits capable of working outside of the probe's pressure hull, at Venus
temperatures. I don't remember ever seeing any details on that. If I would
have to guess, it was vacuum tube technology.

For future probes, silicon-carbide semiconductors seem promising. Some proof-
of-concept electronic instruments working at 500 C have been published in
recent times [2].

[1]
[http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venera11.htm](http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venera11.htm)

[2]
[https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012LPI....43.1259H/abstra...](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012LPI....43.1259H/abstract)

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dmead
looks like the octave key mechanism on a woodwind.

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smlckz
wow!

