VIDEO: 100 year-old mechanical harmonic analyser

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Jordan Miller
Posts: 21
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

26 Feb 2015

Hi, I found these videos fascinating and thought some of you would too! 

From the description:
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This introduction to the series Albert Michelson’s Harmonic Analyzer celebrates a nineteenth century mechanical computer that performed Fourier analysis by using gears, springs and levers to calculate with sines and cosines—an astonishing feat in an age before electronic computers.
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I tried to also post just links for iOS users but I couldn't get it to work, sorry, links were automatically converted to embedded players??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAsM30MAHLg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KmVDxk ... wq&index=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dW6VYX ... qGNW5AeEwq

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfH-Nbs ... qGNW5AeEwq

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMHw9GC ... wq&index=5

Also there is some more bonus video on the youtube channel if you so wish and I recommend the engineer guy's other content. Great explanations and demonstrations of science and engineering.

https://www.youtube.com/user/engineerguyvideo/featured

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EnochLight
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Joined: 17 Jan 2015
Location: Imladris

26 Feb 2015

Wow - that's amazing!  Thanks for sharing this.
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avasopht
Competition Winner
Posts: 3932
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

26 Feb 2015

A little bit of CRAZY maths, but the operation for adding cosines to produce a waveform is also the same operation used for analysing a waveform to produce the cosines!

So basically by creating a machine that sums sines and cosines, you have also created a spectral analyser!!!

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Nymphomation
Posts: 53
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

17 Mar 2015

Great videos, thanks for sharing!

Also worth a look if you're interested:
http://woodenbooks.com/browse/harmonograph/index.php

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clone
Posts: 266
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

18 Mar 2015

This machine is amazing!

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