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Built by Osaka Imperial University and Syowa Kookuu-keiki Co.Ltd., likely on a Imperial Japanese Navy contract.

Note that postwar the Japanese use the American spelling for analyser, i.e. analyzer.

Early computer dating to 1944 solving complex equations again after long 'reboot'

December 02, 2014


By HISATOSHI KABATA/ Staff Writer




An early analog computer developed seven decades ago that was a forerunner of the modern computer was brought back "online" at the Tokyo University of Science in Shinjuku Ward on Dec. 1.

The restored mechanical device, known as a differential analyzer, is one of only two working models in existence. It solved differential equations using gear wheels, metal rods and string-wound disks, all of which are powered by motors.

The vital equipment, about the size of a ping-pong table, first sets up equations to calculate the movement of an object and other problems with mechanical components, and then draws graphs on paper with a pen.

During the Dec. 1 demonstration, it spent 15 minutes sketching a sine curve.

The computing machine was originally developed at Osaka Imperial University (present-day Osaka University) around 1944. It was later transferred to the Tokyo University of Science and has been displayed at the school’s Museum of Science in Shinjuku Ward.

After a year and a half of restoration, researchers at the Tokyo university and other parties succeeded in restoring the device to operating condition by disassembling and cleaning the body as well as installing lost components.

At first, they tried winding nylon and other similar materials around the rotating metal disks. But as those materials failed to have the equipment work properly due to difficulty in adjusting the resistance, the researchers instead used silk koto strings, which are believed to have been originally utilized.

According to the researchers, the calculation results by the device slightly differ from day to day, because of sensitivity to changes in the temperature and humidity.

Hiromichi Hashizume, a system engineering professor at the National Institute of Informatics, said the restored calculating machine is one of only two operational differential analyzers produced before the end of World War II that exist in the world.

The other working analyzer is owned by the University of Manchester in Britain, according to Hashizume.

The Tokyo University of Science will conduct a demonstration of the equipment twice a week from next year.



By HISATOSHI KABATA/ Staff Writer

There are a couple of pictures at the original article.

It had an older (completed in 1942) sibling at Tokyo Imperial University’s Aviation Laboratory, this one funded by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Another photo of the machine at the RIDAI (Tokyo University of Science) Museum of Modern Science is attached below.


IMAGE CREDIT: IPSJ Computer Museum site
 

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