Mechanical Computing reports that “Tim Robinson has built a computer capable of solving polynomial equations — using Meccano.” What’s Meccano? Well, according to Meccano, a Short History, Meccano was a construction toy — think “Erector set” — designed by Frank Hornby of Liverpool, England, in 1901. It was know as Meccanics Made Easy then. In 1908 it became Meccano. After a long run, Meccano Ltd. went into receivership in 1979.
Meccano is still available however. Their original French subsidiary, now an independantly owned company, still produces Meccano from a factory in France. Around 1990, Meccano France purchased the rights to the “Erector” trademark in the U.S.A. and started selling Meccano sets marked “Erector Meccano” in the U.S.A.. Exacto Ltd. of Buenos Aires, Argentina still produces Meccano.
The Brio Erector Meccano sets are pretty impressive.
But creating a working mechanical computer out of them is just plain crazy:
This model operates on principles very similar to Babbage’s original designs, though the constraints of using only standard Meccano parts inevitably mean some aspects of the operation are somewhat different. The model can handle decimal numbers with up to four digits, and up to three orders of differences — similar in scope to the fragment of the original Difference Engine #1 which Babbage actually realized in 1832. There is no reason in principle (other than the limited world supply of 21/2” gears and ratchet wheels!) why it could not be extended to arbitrary sized numbers and an arbitrary order of differences. Only two basic mechanisms are involved, those for the addition of individual decimal digits, and for the propagation of carries. The rest is repetition. The machine calculates reliably, producing a result about every 4 seconds — somewhat faster than they can be read off and written down. I have no doubt that if the Meccano of the 1920′s had existed 100 years earlier, Babbage would have been entirely successful in his quest. It may be amusing one day to attach a Meccano steam engine to drive the mechanism and therefore realize “computing by steam”.