Wow, this is underrated. The start of the video cuts between a few other inventions this creator made using air. They discussed using air for digital logic gates generally.
Really neat stuff I hadn’t thought about before!
scentoni 16 days ago [-]
If the active elements were convex instead of concave, I can imagine this being useful for people with visual impairments. How does this compare to existing technologies for braille displays?
Sometimes I wonder whether computing would have been possible if electricity and its related effects could not be harnessed for logic and computation. In that alternate universe I could imagine us creating quite sophisticated devices running off of compressed air; perhaps not to the atomic level of precision we can achieve with solid state devices, but extremely capable nonetheless.
r4ge 15 days ago [-]
Charles Babbage designed his difference engine that was mechanical and used punch cards for loading programs. The machine was mechanical and used a steam engine to power it.
fhdkweig 15 days ago [-]
And they weren't just hypothetical curiosities. Many companies manufactured variants of the concept.
Desktop mechanical adding machines continued to be used in offices all the way up to the 1970s when electronics finally replaced them.
Manipulating free electrons in electronic logical devices has important advantages in enabling miniaturization, low energy consumption, high speed and long life, but it is possible to make logical devices, including computers, using a great variety of other techniques.
You can easily make logical gates, automata or complete computers using pneumatic or hydraulic or electro-mechanical or purely mechanical devices.
These 4 kinds are still in use in certain applications, where their advantages remain important, but even more implementation techniques are possible, for instance with optical devices or with devices based on controlling ionic flows instead of electron flows or with devices based on controlling the kinetics of chemical reactions (i.e. an enzyme whose activity can be modulated, e.g. it can be inhibited, can be seen as the equivalent of a transistor or a relay, because it can allow or prevent the conversion between 2 chemical substances, i.e. the flow of matter between the 2 substances, like a relay can allow or prevent the flow of electrical current). The latter 2 kinds of devices are exemplified by the living beings.
olalonde 16 days ago [-]
Rocky would approve.
sudo_cowsay 16 days ago [-]
niche
pipe01 14 days ago [-]
Amaze. Amaze. Amaze.
timonoko 15 days ago [-]
I bet you can reproduce the look on Cheap Yellow Display for 5€.
Really neat stuff I hadn’t thought about before!
The technology hasn't changed at all since the 1992 film Sneakers with the blind character Whistler. https://youtu.be/GS3npSv8iuM?t=124
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTB5XhjbgZA
No affiliation, just one of my favourite videos.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47733345
Desktop mechanical adding machines continued to be used in offices all the way up to the 1970s when electronics finally replaced them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CNqWY_kNZ8
You can easily make logical gates, automata or complete computers using pneumatic or hydraulic or electro-mechanical or purely mechanical devices.
These 4 kinds are still in use in certain applications, where their advantages remain important, but even more implementation techniques are possible, for instance with optical devices or with devices based on controlling ionic flows instead of electron flows or with devices based on controlling the kinetics of chemical reactions (i.e. an enzyme whose activity can be modulated, e.g. it can be inhibited, can be seen as the equivalent of a transistor or a relay, because it can allow or prevent the conversion between 2 chemical substances, i.e. the flow of matter between the 2 substances, like a relay can allow or prevent the flow of electrical current). The latter 2 kinds of devices are exemplified by the living beings.
This also looks like a real thing any further than a foot: https://youtube.com/shorts/JlYUZN7aw20?si=a_DspL_Ct2NLSyaO
https://www.engadget.com/this-oled-screen-can-fill-with-liqu...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=j_rErbhxNFM
They show a few other interesting actuators in first 20 seconds of video.