differential analyser BrE
differential analyzer

Differential analysers have also been used in the calculation of soil erosion by river control authorities.

The Cambridge laboratory initially had many different computing devices, including a differential analyser.

Mechanical integrators were key elements in the mechanical differential analyser, used to solve practical physical problems.

The differential analyser was eventually rendered obsolete by electronic analogue computers and, later, digital computers.

It is estimated that "about 15 Meccano model Differential Analysers were built for serious work by scientists and researchers around the world".

These devices included a model "differential analyser," and the Mallock machine, described as "an electrical simultaneous equation solver."

By 1912 Arthur Pollen had developed an electrically driven mechanical analog computer for fire-control systems, based on the differential analyser.

The addition of the torque amplifier by Vannevar Bush led to the differential analysers of the 1930s and 40s.

The Differential Analyser Explained (updated July 2009)

In order to properly account for this non-linear effect, the Norden used a system of slip-disks similar to those used in differential analysers.

In 1947, UCLA installed a differential analyser built for them by General Electric at a cost of $125,000.

More recently, building differential analysers with Meccano parts has become a popular project among serious Meccano hobbyists.

In effect, the conversion logic is a simple digital computer (more specifically, a digital differential analyser), implemented with mechanical wheels and levers instead of typical electronics.

The Mallock machine was contemporary with the mechanical differential analyser, which was also used at Cambridge during the late 1930s and 1940s.

The differential analyser, a mechanical analog computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration.

A differential analyser may have been used in the development of the bouncing bomb, used to attack German hydroelectric dams during World War II.

In 1933, he visited Vannevar Bush at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and learned at first hand about his differential analyser.

Although Manchester was later to be known as the birthplace of the electronic computer, Douglas Hartree made an earlier contribution building a differential analyser in 1933.

He is part of the team restoring Hartree's Differential Analyser at Manchester Museum of Science and Technology.

In Canada, a differential analyser was constructed at the University of Toronto in 1948 by Beatrice Helen Worsley, but it appears to have had little or no use.

In 1934, Meccano began to be used in the construction of differential analysers, a type of analogue computer used to solve differential equations which has long since become obsolete.

However, the first widely practical differential analyser was constructed by Harold Locke Hazen and Vannevar Bush at MIT, 1928-1931, comprising six mechanical integrators.

A differential analyser at UCLA is shown in operation in the 1951 film When Worlds Collide and the 1956 film Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.

The Differential Analyser, London: Longmans, Green (this is the only book that describes how to set up and operate a mechanical differential analyser).

The latter was used extensively in the computation of artillery firing tables prior to the invention of the ENIAC, which, in many ways, was modelled on the differential analyser.