Long before electricity was a common household utility, humanity had been building machines to do many tasks that we’d now just strap a motor or set of batteries onto and think nothing of it. Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and essentially everything had non-electric analogs, and perhaps surprisingly, there were mechanical computers as well. Electronics-based computers are far superior in essentially every way, but the aesthetics of a mechanical computer are still unmatched, like this 8-bit machine built from K’nex.
More after the break…
The K’nex computer is built by [Shadowman39], and this first video features just the ALU. It can accept numbers from 0-255 or -128 to 127 and can add two of these numbers by storing them in registers using levers to represent each digit. A drive system underneath with a rack and pinion system operates on each digit, eventually outputting the sum. It can also perform other mathematical operations like subtraction and handling negative numbers using the two’s complement method.
Although this video only goes over the ALU for the mechanical computer, we look forward to [Shadowman39]’s future videos, which go over the other parts of the machine. The basics of the computer are shown in intricate detail. Mechanical computers like these, while generally built as passion projects and not as usable computers, are excellent ways to get a deeper understanding of their electronics-based cousins. Another way to dive deep into this sort of computing world is by building a relay computer.
About the first paragraph: Strictly speaking, the electric car was first.
But the petrol based car won, because electric batteries were still in early development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle
I think you’ll find the steam car came first.
Steam -> electric -> gasoline.
Super fun! Great imagination.
Fascinating! A very impressive project in so many ways.
If Charles Babbage had KNEX, he probably would have made his machines on time and within budget.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage
..and Lada Ada would have been in to plastic surgery.
Konrad Tuse would be proud of Shadowman39 :)
Zuse.
Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse.
Digi-comp 1 grows up!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digi-Comp_I
Okay sure but did [Shadowman39] ever actually finish the rollercoaster?
My brother got that for Christmas when he and I were kids, we took it with us to our grandparents’ house on Boxing day (the day after Christmas day) and built it there. Dad had to go round with his van to pick it up.
Back in ’75 Danny Hillis and Brad Silverman built a computer that could play tic-tac-toe entirely from Tinkertoys.
https://www.retrothing.com/2006/12/the_tinkertoy_c.html
errrhm…. i failed to see Doom being played on it
Well, it’s not a computer yet. Only the ALU has been built so far.
I always wonder if aliens with far superior tech have a Doom equivalent. “Cool planetary Dyson sphere run quantum computer – but can it run ___?”
I wonder how hard it would be to build something like this out of LEGO Technic.
I was thinking the same thing, if anybody had done it yet.
It should be considerably easier to build with Technic. Technic has so many parts for implementing mechanisms. In fact, just recently the design “Turing Machine – Working Lego Computer” was declined for being a commercial Lego Creator set.
https://beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/10a3239f-4562-4d23-ba8e-f4fc94eef5c7
Is that a voice I hear from Charles Babbage’s grave “If I only had KNEX!”
Babbage wouldn’t create such a nuisance of himself, in fact he’d be writing strongly worded letters to the council if he heard voices from other graves.
Now if only we could make a certain computer… say, the “Commodore KNEXty-Four”…
Awesome on so many levels! Looking forward to seeing this interacting with registers and a KNEX-based memory system. Well done!!!!