cross-posted from: https://wolfballs.com/post/9464
I'm fascinated by the concept of a mechanical computer, but I was wondering what it could be used for today.
I envision like a pedal powered / bike powered device that turns a ton of gears fast to run a "processor".
The processor would be a thousand or million times slower than digital computers (unless maybe you made a giant one, which probably no one is going to do), so initially I thought it would be useless in comparison, but since we still have paper books that serve some purpose compared to digital PDFs, I was thinking maybe by analogy there could still be a use for mechanical computers and standalone programs to go with them (on punched cards?).
Also for example, there is a project to build Babbage's mechanical "analytical engine", so maybe there is still an educational value in building mechanical computers, or you could still computer simple programs:
http://plan28.org/
https://infogalactic.com/info/Analytical_Engine
Use cases for mechanical computers?
Any design ideas for a mechanical computer?