"MONIAC" by Kaihsu Tai - Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
I discovered the MONIAC computer this morning in Chapter 1 of Take Back The Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities by J. K. Gibson-Graham, Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy. With the first one built in 1949, perhaps only fourteen copies of this water powered computers were made. Using water tanks, levers, opening/closing valves and pipes models of economic change could be "predicted." I recommend you check out this DIY book.
Here's a demonstration of a working MONIAC:
1 comment:
Whoa! Good and wise use of water. This is simply an amazing product but workable only in those eras when we were not running out of time and resources. Today, we prefer some genies to work for us in a jiffy.
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