Vladimir Lukyanov’s Water Pc | Amusing Planet

February 11, 2024

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Early computer systems had been mechanical machines constructed utilizing gears and levers. These elements or parts might be moved with precision and had been related to different parts in a approach that simulated the connection between completely different variables in a mathematical equation. By shifting a gear or pulling a lever, one can change these variables and the outcomes of those actions may be considered in one other set of gears, whose newly acquired positions gave the reply the operator was searching for.

In 1936, a Russian engineer named Vladimir Lukyanov constructed such a mechanical laptop that used not gears and levers however water to compute.

Vladimir Lukyanov’s water integrator. Picture credit score: www.kramola.info

Lukyanov was one of many engineers engaged on the development of the Troitsk-Orsk and Kartaly-Magnitnaya railways within the late Twenties. To make sure the standard and sturdiness of bolstered concrete buildings, the engineers poured concrete solely in the summertime. Regardless of this, cracks nonetheless appeared within the concrete when temperatures dropped beneath zero in winter. Lukyanov steered that this may be averted if a cautious evaluation of the temperature modifications within the concrete mass is made, relying on the composition of the concrete, the cement used, the know-how of the work, and the exterior situations. Lukyanov started finding out temperature situations in concrete masonry, however the current calculation strategies couldn’t give a fast and correct resolution to the complicated differential equations that described the temperature regime.

In the hunt for a brand new method to fixing the issue, Lukyanov found that water movement is in lots of respects comparable in its legal guidelines to the distribution of warmth. He concluded that by constructing a pc the place the primary part was water, Lukyanov might visualize the invisible thermal course of. In 1936, Lukyanov constructed the primary mannequin of his “water integrator” on the Institute of Method and Building (now Central Analysis Institute of Transport Building, or TsNIIS). At the moment it was the one laptop that would resolve partial differential equations.

Lukyanov’s water integrator was a formidable piece of plumbing. It was in regards to the dimension of a closet, and consisted of a number of interconnected pipes and pumps. The water degree in numerous chambers represented saved numbers, and the speed of movement between them represented mathematical operations. The consequence was neatly plotted in a graph.

The early models of the water integrator had been crude product of roofing iron, sheet metallic and glass tubes and had been used just for calculations within the discipline of warmth engineering. Newer fashions had been in a position to resolve extra sophisticated issues which considerably expanded its software. Within the Nineteen Fifties, an integrator was constructed whose elements might be eliminated and mixed in numerous configuration relying on the character and complexity of the issue being solved. The appliance of the water integrator turned so broad that the machine was mass produced to be used in laboratories and academic establishments throughout the Soviet Union. They had been utilized in a variety of purposes, equivalent to fixing development points within the sands of Central Asia and in permafrost, in finding out the temperature regime of the Antarctic ice sheet, fixing issues in rocket science, and so forth.

Lukyanov’s water integrator remained related, regardless of the provision of digital computer systems, for a surprisingly very long time. It was solely within the Nineteen Eighties, with the event of smaller and excessive velocity digital computer systems, that the capabilities of the water integrator started to look dated.