Numberphile - 2017-11-30
Cliff explains his passion for two Friden EC-132s. More links & stuff in full description below ↓↓↓ More Cliff videos: http://bit.ly/Cliff_Videos Calculator Unboxings: http://bit.ly/CalcUnbox Millionaire Machine: https://youtu.be/wwh0KH-ICCw Additional thanks to http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com Read more about the machine at: http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/friden130.html Numberphile is supported by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI): http://bit.ly/MSRINumberphile We are also supported by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. NUMBERPHILE Website: http://www.numberphile.com/ Numberphile on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/numberphile Numberphile tweets: https://twitter.com/numberphile Subscribe: http://bit.ly/Numberphile_Sub Videos by Brady Haran Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/numberphile Brady's videos subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/BradyHaran/ Brady's latest videos across all channels: http://www.bradyharanblog.com/ Sign up for (occasional) emails: http://eepurl.com/YdjL9
I have a degree in computer science and electrical engineering, have been working professionally in the field for over 20 years, and I have no clue how that coil stores bits.
It seems like it would have been easier to just use a bunch if transistors. Ok, transistors were too expensive, well anything that is on/of could store memory indefinitely, how about a few hundred tiny relays (with a little creativity they could be used to store multiples of 200 bits; 400, 800,etc) , or even diodes somehow (they only allow electricity to flow in one direction ), idk what the memory bit size of that piano wire is, maybe it was bigger than solid state circuitry of the time could be made to memorize but I doubt it.
We always forget that technology was amazing back then too. Just because it wasn't as advanced as it is now it's still just as amazing imo
Imagine 1000 people walking in a big circle; as they cross the START line they are either handed a card with a 1 on it or not handed a card, which is a zero. As they take a step around the circle a person arrives at the START line they flip a switch to 1 or 0 depending on what their card says.
Scott Kronmiller You are quite exact!
@Gerben van Straaten strictly taking you are right , but it is being used as a memory in this application ......
1960's: Here's a piece of piano wire... go build a calculator with it.
wow...
These were the people that put a habitable tin can on the moon. We owe them a lot.
Amazing. I can’t wait to see his explanation of the flux capacitor.
He described it in a brilliant documentary based around his life called 'Back to the Future'. He plays the doc.
+kumquatmagoo Back to the Future is based on a true story. Christopher Lloyd played the part of Cliff.
I CANT BELIVE THIS PERSON NEVER SAW BACK TO THE FUTURE!!!!
Lol
To be honest I thought what he said about it in BTTF was lackluster in comparison to this video.
“I’m bringing to life what people who came before me gave birth to.”
Damn
I so genuinely love Cliff. He has this genuine joviality and enthusiasm about everything he does, like he's never forgotten his youthful energy for a moment and it's his craving to learn and to know that gives him that energy. <3
Yeah, i can't really describe him very well,, but you did well :^)
Best YouTube comment ever.
Cliff is a rare human jewel.
You should read his book
@Matt M wow Matt .. you touched my soul with the comment .... Im my case every day issue and problem is also killing it
Take it from a developer: when debugging software, you often have to get into the mind of the people who wrote it, and it ain't pretty.
+Garry Iglesias I didn't interpret what he said the way you did. The way I interpreted what he said was that debugging software written by other people is quite a challenge.
Especially if it is your own code you should debug because of a bug after some months....
Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The original writer was always either an idiot or an inspired genius, no middle ground. This applies even if the original writer was myself.
Heck, even when I revisit MY OWN code, years later, I wonder sometimes what the heck my line of reasoning was in some places! LOL. Commenting within the code helps, though.
Oops... I thought the "astonishing old calculator" was the guy in the thumbnail... xD
He certainly is astonishing!
Booooh
That would be even older :D
I honestly hope that when I get to around Cliff's age, I still have things in my life that elicit such a such a sense of giddy wonder. What an inspiration!
I watched this entire episode with my jaw dropped. I'm a 35 year old software engineer, and I can't get enough of this stuff.
verdatum And here’s one I prepared earlier
This guy is a national treasure, seriously
this guy is international treasure, really seriously
Truly.
Global public domain, please. :)
Everyone's grandpa.
Except with less Nicolas Cage.
"Boink!"
I’m a simple person. I see Cliff Stoll, I click.
An old man ecstatic about an old piece of technology. You can tell it in his voice. (I’m also ecstatic too though)
Inan Xu I am home sick from seventh grade with the flu, and my eyes are saucers.
Cliff is an astonishing old calculator
AWWW YEEEEAAAAAH!!! IT'S A CLIFF EPISODE!!!
it felt a bit like a cooking show when Cliff pulled out another working calculator
You guys brought joy to my day.
nihonium, pun intended?
People would put original Xbox 360 models with the red ring of death in an oven to fix them no joke
Due to time restrictions, here is a working one.
Here's one I made earlier!
#42 on trending. 42.
the answer to life...
"An astonishing old calculator" says the video title with a thumbnail of Cliff
As an electrical engineer myself, I can vouch for the fact that the 'Scotty' approach of hacking together a solution from whatever technology is available is alive and well. The details of the problems are perhaps more specialized these days, but it still comes down to finding whatever clever trick will get the job done.
Sometimes you find a math trick to avoid expensive computations. Sometimes you find a clever way to recover 'lost' energy and do something more efficiently. And sometimes you store data on piano wire. Whatever the trick is, there's no feeling quite like MacGyvering your way through a problem.
His passion is infectious
Makes me think of Richard Feynman and his love for puzzles
"So how will the calculator remember the input?"
" P I A N O W I R E "
This shows how the space & aeronautical programs in the 60's were the greatest technological achievements in history.
Back in the 40s and 50s they also used mercury delay lines -- long glass tubes filled with mercury, and similar to the piano wire memory of this video, sent acoustic waves down the tube and either modified or sent the same bit back around again.
fudgesauce Up until about 2000, TVs used ultrasonic acoustic filters inside.
Read the first page of Asimov's first robot novel, "The Caves of Steel" (1954). The detective protagonist requests some data. Asimov describes the data rippling through mercury and when the data is read out it's recorded onto a piece of wire (wire recorders predated tape recorders by half a century -- in one of the first episodes of "Mission Impossible" (1966) the data they sought was recorded on wire which was hidden in a window planter).
In 1978 I was serving as an Air Force computer technician. In a required correspondence course for my AFSC I studied a magneto-strictive wire delay-line memory (identical, I'm sure, to what's in Cliff's calculators). In tech school, we were introduced to delay lines, but by then they were just used to ensure that all the signals got to where they needed to be at the right times (signals travel at about the speed of light, about a foot per nanosecond) -- the 1980 Cray S1 supercomputer ran so fast (for that time) that for a delay line they'd just lay down a few centimeters more trace on the circuit board. However, by 1977 our tech school no longer talked about using delay lines as memory; that was just a historical footnote the instructor added on his own.
Learning how we used to do things is fascinating.
It makes life worth living knowing people like Cliff exist
Absolutely! Well said!
Using RPN before RPN was invented.
Not before RPN but before the HP 35. Very cool
Also before the HP 9100 (desktop-sized predecessor or the HP 35).
That last statement, Cliff... I almost cried (literally)
Fernando Zigunov True, enormous respect
Yes, a kind man as well as a great one.
Love Cliff so much. His passion makes me smile :-)
That sort of memory was sometimes called a "mumble tank" even when it wasn't a tank. They also made memories that used a spinning bit of magnetic tape.
Imagine trying to smuggle that thing into a math test!
John Norton cliff is a person not a thing
I'd like to borrow it just to take thru TSA at the airport.
I think it's probably too big and someone like the invigilator might spot it and accuse you of cheating.
It'd be so quiet in there that the teacher would hear the ding on the piano wire.
For its time, the problems solved and ingenuity in creating this calculator is genius.
I can't be the only one anticipating him saying "Great scott!"
I LOVE CLIFF!
I'm starting to venture into hardware development. This almost brought me to tears, for real. I feel humbled and in awe by the sheer ingenuity it must have taken to design this device with the technology available back then. Thanks for uploading this video.
I love Cliff's videos, his excitement is so contagious!
I love this guy, love to see when he’s on numberphile
Back then my father used a mechanical calculator, similar to the one shown in the opening of this video.
1:38 I love how he explains how the machine works XD
Acoustic memory? Now I have heard everything.
You make a sound point.
I don't remember hearing about acoustic memory before...
Remarkable and well-noted.
A more common name is, acoustic delay line. I've seen delay lines based on one technology or another up to the present day.
Bah-pun dish
Please do a video all about recirculating audioacoustic memory!
WOW! Cliff's videos never disappoint. I'm sure these calculators blew peoples' minds when they came out
They still blow people’s minds toda y
I've never seen him before, but that guy is the happiest old man I've ever seen.
Cliff touches me deep
Cliff is going to rebuild a DeLorean DMC-12 next.
He already did, just not in the current timeline.
Luckily our timeline allows us to view that one through film.
I love this guy and his Klein bottles so entertaining!
Hi Cliff! I finished reading The Cuckoo's Egg last week and enjoyed it immensely. Glad to see you're still doing well and being awesome.
Incredible person, Cliff. His enthusiasm inspires me and, reading the comments, a lot of other people. Thank you man!
When I was an undergraduate in the 70s there was a working one of those in the engineering lab. ISTR using it for thermodynamic calculations. Later I went to lectures my MV Wilkes who invented the mercury delay line, the precursor of the wire memory.
"The reason is, it teaches me, gives me a sense of— *jumps up and down* !!!" –Cliff Stoll
“Nothing mechanical in here!” ...and then proceeds to explain how the memory is stored using vibrations in a piano wire. That’s a mechanism, Cliff!
Mister Apple - 2017-11-30
This person is the best kind of eccentric.
becomepostal - 2019-06-03
Sometimes teaching requires a little bit of theatrical skills.
pixoariz - 2019-08-12
Thank goodness for that. Cliff Stoll gave us young weirdos his permission to let it all hang out all those years ago.
ocean lopez - 2019-09-16
He's my favourite on this channel. I absolutely adore him.
Enzo Leonardo - 2019-09-23
Kinda reminds me of a hyperactive Jeff Goldblum
rmm2000 - 2019-10-19
Agree. It would be an honour to cup his testicles.