On 04/11/2014 08:49 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: > In <[email protected]>, on 04/10/2014 > at 08:53 PM, Barry Merrill <[email protected]> said: > >> As the EE Lab Professor (name now forgotten, but rather aged as I >> recall) finished the instructions for that lab project, he said "I >> have been instructed to read this note to all EE students", and >> picking up a one-page, dittoed notice, he continued "The IBM >> Corporation has donated a Model 610 digg-it-tal, er, digital, >> computer, located in room 240, and students can sign up for blocks >> of time to use it." Slamming the sheet of paper face down, he >> then said "those digital things will never amount to anything, >> but next year, as Juniors, you will be able to go across the >> hall to room 241 and use the Bendix G15 Analog Computer - that's >> how we Electrical Engineer's solve real problems!" > Bendix G15 Analog Computer? Digital, Shirley. > The base G-15 was indeed digital, but when connected to one of its peripheral devices, the DA-1 Differential Analyzer, it took on the characteristics of a digital/analog hybrid, with programming based on integrators and multipliers like an analog computer. If the EE Professor was convinced the G-15 was analog, it was probably always used with a DA-1 and he just didn't understand that the control functions of the system resided in a digital computer capable of independent operation and that the seemingly analog elements of the combined system were actually emulated digitally within the DA-1.
-- Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
