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An astonishing old calculator - Numberphile

Numberphile1 HN recommenders · 2017–2023
794K views · explainer · evergreen · Uploaded 2017-11-30

Cliff Stoll shows and explains his two Friden EC-132 electronic calculators for Numberphile. The video covers how these early machines worked, including their unusual acoustic delay line memory.

It is the go-to visual explanation of delay-line memory and early electronic calculators whenever the topic comes up.

History of computingRecreational & visual mathComputer architecture & CPUs

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3 comments from Hacker News

@kdoherty2017 · in “Acoustic delay line memory (2014)”

There is also a fantastic video where Cliff Stoll describes the Friden EC-132 calculator and shows off its acoustic delay line here: [VIDEO]

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@major5052020 · in “The Friden EC-130, one of the world's first electronic calculators”

Cool way to store the bits. I saw the other day a video about an old eletronic calculator that stores itens in memory usinglike a piano wire, and microfones, and small speakers, to make the cord vibrate, and store the value. It was the Friden ec-132 [VIDEO]

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@db48x2023 · in “111,111.1 meters is reliably 1 degree of latitude”

There were a lot of delay–line memories back in the day. It wasn’t just that they didn’t have memory chips; memory chips hadn’t been invented yet. [VIDEO]

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