Never mind their remark about getting tired of the steampunk genre, as the awsomer (known from notalwaysright dot com) has put these dollish steampunk robots up, bringing to my attention the etsy gallery of the builders studio, where you can get little steampunk gizmos for prices as low as $10!
Spotted on Gizmodo and created by Tarator on the TopMods.net forum.
Don’t you just love the sight of brass and copper used for something this nice?
(Also suggested by Kristopher, thank you!)
Boingboing recently wrote a bit about an old computer, a heavyweight contraption weighting in at 2500 lbs, whose inner workings of gears, cogs and mechanical components of all kinds, enclosed in glass and mahogany, are capable of out-preforming a team of a 100 trained mathematicians.
It is the tide predicting machine Number two, also known as “the brass brain“
More pictures can be found here
I was reading “The Cryptonomicon” by Neal Stephenson just now, and came across a very interesting bit. A conversation between one of the main characters and Alan Turing (the one and only) who has recently discovered radio tubes, and intends to build a computer using them.
“I cannot believe the number of years I wasted on sprockets! God!” “Your zeta-function machine? I thought it was beautiful,” Lawrence says. “So are many things that belong in a museum,” Alan says.
Truer words …
Some of the most beautiful things ever crafted by man can be found in Museums across the world. Old artefacts, mementos of times long passed. Items that are outdated, replaced by better versions or alternatives and often forgotten.
One of those things is a “computer” like the one discussed above: an enormous calculator that works with just mechanical forces. Cogs and sprockets on drive shaft operated by a hand-crank, Charles Babbage’s difference engine.
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