math-meets-machines

[Thomas Puettmann]

Hi, and thanks for the positive feedback.

The overflow bell at the binary adder is in fact essential for exciting the interest of children. I exhibited some of my machines twice to a broader public and particularly children between the ages of 8 to 12 like to play with the binary adder and get an intuitive understanding of binary numbers. They always like the bell the most.

For children it is indeed important that you can drop the balls one by one into the adder. In the video, I just did it simultaneously because I wanted to sync the input and the writing on the right. No interference is possible when you drop them simultaneously. The possible carries from upstairs always arise later. For this reason there is no need to distinguish between half adders and full adders as in electric circuits.

Paul, when I first read about the WP 34s here in this forum I immediately wanted to have one. But unfortunately, some hours later my mind said: you don't have time to spend on things that you don't actually need, you need some flashing cable, you have a PPC mac that is way to old to run the flashing software.... So I haven't converted any HP 30b into a WP 34s until now and might perhaps never do. But I did enjoy the spirit of the project very much. Conversely, I would of course be very happy about anyone rebuilding my machines, but I am also happy if someone just likes the spirit.

Anyway, rebuilding the models will become much more worthwhile in the future as the number of models grows. I plan to write a book about the models, what one can learn from them, and how they relate to parts of the history of mathematics and technology. If there is sufficient interest something like a construction kit might perhaps also be possible.