What happens when you divide by zero on a mechanical 1950s calculator

who would have thought that the secret to infinite energy is zero divided by zero on a mechanical calculator? perpetual motion in the 1950s

A Sony laptop released in 1986😱

math is a specification, / 0 spec is undefined. means the implementation is free to do whatever it wants - they'd all be equally correct.

It keeps going until the motor, designed for intermittent use, overheats and burns up.

My 7th grade math teacher said he did this at some museum where they had a much bigger version … and the same thing happened. He unplugged it and plugged it back in … and it kept going. He said he just walked away and never figured out how they fixed it 😆😆😆

it’s… it’s… infinity ∞

My father was a baker and had one of these in his office. And as a curious young lad I did this very thing. He was not amused

Old invention

A six-year-old can do mental abacus faster than a calculator

The video ends at 0:45 and does not show the final computed result 😭 Does anyone have the rest of the video? i was expecting the machine to trigger a singularity in the timespace continuum opening a vortex to another dimension. Either that, or the machine gears desintegrating.

Human calculator 🤯

The evolution of computer.

They forgot to put a NaN return value on that thing 😅

Some say ... It's still calculating

The little machine that couldn't

Now imagine it finds a solution and there exists a limit to infinity. Realities buffer overflow, hacking the matrix with a 1950's calculator.

So how do you stop it? I mean, the calculator will be used sometime later, right?

Did they not account for the possibility that someone may try that when they made it? 😅

Well, cuz dividing on 0 is infinity, so it's obvious it'd count forever

I never thought zero has so much value while looking at this machine

On a mechanical 1950s calculator, dividing by zero would usually cause the machine to jam or produce an undefined result. Unlike modern digital calculators, it didn’t show an error message, it might make the gears lock up, spin endlessly, or display a meaningless number. Essentially, the calculator couldn’t handle the operation safely.

Looks like a thing of the past

“What happens when you divide by zero on a mechanical 1950s calculator.”

@BrianRoemmele

Infinity

This was how the engine was invented

Things can’t stay the same forever

I had a Casio Personal Mini from 1975 that would try to count how many times 0 went into something. It would just go and go and go, showing the counter as it went. Fun stuff!

That makes sense , its infinity.

@grok explain the mechanism

Woah the old one