Analog Computers

This issue concerns the construction of roads, bridges, shortcuts, and links in nearly every corner of the globe, whether real or virtual, to facilitate the transfer of goods and services for trading using many natural languages keeping records in written codes and numbers. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, television, consoles, PCs, Internet, World Wide Web, mobile phones, and smartphones has brought humanity closer together, enabling the instant sharing of ideas and knowledge through communication. However, it has also led to a reduction in-to-face interaction. Nowadays, with Gigabit connections through optic fibers, software tends to concentrate in the Cloud, the Internet feel like home, as the Linux/GNU motto suggests. The dice have been cast. The cogs and wheels are turning like the enigmatic mechanism of the Antikythera, the first analog computer that measured the night sky to navigate safely for latitude coordination. Can you divide a copper plate disk into 53 teeth with the tools of ancient times? A colleague of mine also mentioned that the ancient Greek loom was a clever device utilizing human muscle kinetic energy for clothes. Perhaps was inspired by the punch cards for IBM’s Hollerith typing machines.