Russian non-computer space navigation system. It just uses ~500 gears.

It computes something, then its a computer. Doesn't need chips to be a computer. Thats just how modern computing works.

Oh yes, actually….

Analog computers and their like are absolutely amazing works of engineering. Pure art.

Thank you for your post Sr. You may find this interesting

no problem

relays, potentiometers, electronics aready visible in your own video, right here ... "purely mechanical" ... nope

I would love to see some of the documentation for the design. All that was done by hand, no computers, no calculators, no CAD, nothing. I would love to see how they engineered it and all the hand work.

This is what an old airplane fuel control looks like

I love old space tech! In case anyone was wondering, this INK-2S Globus sold at Bonhams Auction in 2016 for $37,500!

Freaking genius. Love this stuff.

Curious Marc on Youtube!

This was our tech tree before the UFOs gave us capacitors

we used gyro based gear driven navigation computers like this in aircraft from WWII through the 1970s. Last one I used was in an HC-130H on a trip from San Franciso to Hawaii; was called in late at night for a mission and when I boarded just before takeoff the Inertial Navigation System's had not been aligned, so I used celestial navigation during the night and controlled the autopilot with the doppler computer which was one of these instruments and could be selected by the pilot and was totally mechanical with controls actually below the navigators table.

If anyone is interested in taking a closer look at how this device works, here is a link for you to explore!

Whoever invented the Antikythera mechanism sniffing of this from their grave:

There will be a time when we will return to analog stuff, maybe right after a major solar outbreak wipes all digitally stored information and destroys the electric grid.

@grok which year is this USSR device from?

Those analog computers is what can be left working after a significant solar storm. Cold war context, key instruments must survive the proximity of a nuclear spatial blast. Still used on fighter planes, probably even on an F35 for navigation and some targeting function.

do you think anyone is capable of inventing such a thing nowadays? (even thought we don't need it) Mechanical engineering is becoming a lost art

Well, I think we can say the earth isn't flat 🤣

Norden bombsight, analog, gear driven, emp and battery failure proof. This is why Brian's insistence that all data, including the analog past, be available to AI.

Have seen one in the Smithsonian. I disagree about it being the "pinnacle of technology" at the time though! More like a glorified flight computer combined with medieval locking mechanisms.

I wonder if this accounts for the fact that Earth is an oblate spheroid, not a sphere

@LGcommaI Neato!

Soviet Antikythera Mechanism

That is very nice. What a collectors item!!

500 gears, zero CVEs

Love or hate them...that is a pretty clever design and solution to a fairly complex problem. 🫡👍

Made me think of the Antikythera mechanism with all of its gears, but that one is 2000yrs old.

Not an electronic computer, but still a (mechanical) computer!

@RRunner144 analog baby.

Essentially, this instrument serves as a mechanical navigation computer, utilized at a time when digital computing systems lacked the necessary reliability and miniaturization.

”non-computer” lol. Analog would be the word and im quite sure this thing has electronics

It's an electro-mechanical analog computer. You mean "non-digital."