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The Most Powerful Computers You've Never Heard Of

Veritasium · explainer · Watch on YouTube

History of computingMechanical & precision engineering

What it is

Veritasium traces analog computers from the Antikythera mechanism and Kelvin's tide-predicting machines to fire control and modern analog approaches. It explains how these machines computed continuously rather than digitally.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended in threads on analog computing, photonic chips, AI hardware and tide prediction as an engaging history of Kelvin's machines.

  • 6 people recommended it
  • 5 different months
  • 1 strong recommendations
  • first 2021, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “His video before this one[1] goes into detail on that, and it was incredible.”

    Details Kelvin's tide-predicting analog computers; incredible history.

    jodrellblank, 2022-03 · Strong recommendation · in “We're building computers wrong [video]”

  2. “It's quite fascinating how they even managed to do basic Fourier transforms without electricity”

    Tide-computing analog machines doing Fourier transforms without electricity.

    WJW, 2022-01 · Recommendation · in “Mechanical computing systems using only links and rotary joints”

  3. “here's two youtube videos that explain is much better than I could.”

    Explains analog computing hardware better than commenter could.

    cultofmetatron, 2022-03 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: What is your take on carbon emissions of Machine Learning”

  4. “Veritasium has two great videos on it”

    Two great videos on analog computing in AI.

    woojoo666, 2022-06 · Recommendation · in “Photonic Chip Performs Image Recognition at the Speed of Light”

  5. “There is a very good Veritasium video that talks about analog computers”

    Covers analog computers and Kelvin's tide prediction machine.

    nico, 2024-06 · Recommendation · in “Lord Kelvin and his analog computer”

  6. “Veritasium made a great video on Kelvin's Tide-predicting machine in 2021.”

    Kelvin's tide-predicting machine.

    o4c, 2025-12 · Recommendation · in “Tides are weirder than you think”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: analog computing, kelvin, tide predictor, antikythera, history of computing

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