2. Computers don’t have to be electronic (Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace’s Difference Engines; here’s a video about it [5½ minutes], with some clips of one in operation)

3. Computers don’t have to be electronic (The Digi-Comp 1 kit from 1963, computing with rubber bands; here’s a video about it, 16 minutes)

4. Computers don’t have to be electronic (Turing Tumble, a kit and game you can get that does computations with the action of falling marbles; here’s their Getting Started video [5 minutes])

5. Computers don’t have to be electronic (The 8-Bit computer built of K’NEX parts called the MechaDigit-1, bits posted here twice before; here’s video of it [18 minutes]; and here’s an older project called the K’nuter [10 minutes])

rodneylives

Shadowman39 has been working hard to implement an 8-bit computer entirely out of parts of the building set K’NEX. He’s just released his fourth progress video (18 minutes):

Here are the previous videos in the series: Part 1: the ALU (15 minutes), Part 2: Registers, RAM and Data Transfer (18 minutes) and Part 3: ROM, Program Counter and Jumps (20 minutes).

This isn’t the only K’NEX-based computing device out there, but it seems to be the most complex and capable of doing actual work. I do hope that none of the little plastic parts on the inside of that multicolor computational Borg cube doesn’t break a tooth, because replacing it seems like it would be nearly as hard as fixing a cylinder in an engine block.

rodneylives