BUSH DIFFERENTIAL ANALYZER

In 1931 Vannevar Bush and a group of students at MIT, built a calculator capable of solving differential equations at +/- 1% accuracy. The machine called, “the Bush Differential Analyzer,” was purely mechanical, constructed of wheels and pulleys, filled a room and weighed 100 tons. It also contained more than a thousand vacuum tubes, several thousand relays, and more than 100 motors.

Differential calculations are time consuming and difficult, but being able to perform them with a programmable machine, even if the programming involved adjusting wheel tension, was very valuable. On the other hand, the analyzer was prone to failure toward the end of its analysis, losing all of its data up to that point.

Still, this represents what is probably the first working, programmable (sort of) computer. Next

Bush Differential Analyzer introduces computer technology that works -- after a fashion.

More information on the Differential Analyzer. provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.