Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #00173



To: Wilf Rigter Wilf.Rigter@powertech.bc.ca
From: Jean auBois aubois@trail.com
Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 14:49:46 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Schmitt trigger


Scotty Dogma wrote:

> >It is a revolution
> >tho...in that it has made people realize that a CPU is not nessary
> >to controll certian functions.

James Watt came up with a workable ANALOG method of controlling the power
output of a steam engine a -very- long time ago. He didn't use a CPU did he?
He probably wouldn't have understood the concept of one.

There have been many, many analog methods for controlling mechanical and
electronic devices for many years. I remember how the Trident I fleet
ballistic
missile was such a big deal because it used a numeric processor -- the Polaris
and other earlier submarine missiles used analog control methods.

This isn't a "new" revolution at all. It may be useful, it may even be the
founding of a lasting technology, but it is hardly particularly novel or
revolutionary. Have you ever heard of William Grey Walter? He made several
highly competent photovores that he called tortoises back in 1948, at
least a few years before Tilden was born . His tortoise used 2
vacuum tubes (!) each of which he termed a "neuron" which isn't particularly
surprising seeing as how his background was in neurology -- he discovered the
delta and theta waves produced by the human brain. His devices showed
more behaviors than most of the stuff that BEAMers today make... for example,
his would actively seek out its charger AND FIND IT when its battery got low.

If ANYONE was the original BEAMer, he was -- with strong emphasis on each word
the acronym stands for. Try looking at the following web pages:

http://www.uwe.ac.uk/facults/eng/ias/walterbot.html
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/facults/eng/ias/gwonline.html
http://www.uwe.ac.uk/facults/eng/ias/gwarkive.html

or

http://eagle.online.discovery.com/cgi-bin/conversations_view/dir849115463/De
ad%20Inventors%20Graveyard/Grey%20Walter

(that is ALL supposed to be a single URL. Huge & ugly, ain't it?)

or try to find his book "The Living Brain".


Z


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