Digi-Comp I

The Digi-Comp I was a functioning, mechanical digital computer sold in kit form. It was originally manufactured from polystyrene parts by E.S.R., Inc. starting in 1963 and sold as an educational toy for US$4.99.

The original DigiComp I
A front view of the Digi-Comp I version 2.0

Operation

In essence, the Digi-Comp I contained three mechanical flip-flops, providing an ability to connect them together in a programmable way using thin vertical wires that are either pushed, or blocked from moving, by a number of cylindrical pegs. The whole arrangement was 'clocked' by moving a lever back and forth. Different configurations of these cylinders caused the Digi-Comp to compute different boolean logic operations. With a three binary digit (3-bit) readout of the state of the flip-flops, it could be programmed to demonstrate binary logic, to perform various operations such as addition and subtraction, and to play some simple logic games such as Nim.[1]

Reproductions

The Digi-Comp I version 2.0 was made available by Minds-On Toys in 2005 as a relatively inexpensive binder's board version of the original Digi-Comp with a much enhanced instruction manual.[2]

A successor, the Digi-Comp II, was not programmable, but in effect a visible calculator. A two-level masonite platform with guides served as the medium for a supply of marbles that rolled down an inclined plane, moving plastic cams as they fell.[3]

gollark: Greetings, mortal!
gollark: It *might* be possible to evade it by meddling with your DNS settings; does your phone support "private DNS"/DNS over HTTPS?
gollark: https://voidlinux.org/packages/ doesn't show it.
gollark: I can confirm that it is not in the repositories under that name maybe.
gollark: All you can do is create data structures/allocate things, and somehow having these be GCed does computation.

See also

References
  1. Woodhouse, Trevor. "K'nex Computer". YouTube. Trevor Woodhouse. Retrieved 15 November 2015.
  2. "Minds-On Toys - Kits". Retrieved 2013-04-17.
  3. "Yahoo friendsofdigicomp". Retrieved 2013-04-17.


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