a few years back aparently a bucnh of massive old machines where being
transported somewhere--the trailors parked on a side street here in the
bronx--they where massive machines one I remeber was a shaper--first one i
ever saw--many looked like wwII stuff---what stories there machines could
have told!

i once got into the history of electron spark machining--discovered in
Russia by two brothers during the nazi invasion of Russia--whiss i could
find out modre about them






On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 18:04:19 GMT, Ed Huntress
wrote:

"john" wrote in message
...
Kirk Gordon wrote:

Ed Huntress wrote:

That's pretty much it. It should be pointed out that it was
controlled
by a
computer, not by a simple logic controller, so it was also the first
CNC
machine.

Really? Are you sure? I didn't know that!

KG
--
I'm sick of spam.
The 2 in my address doesn't belong there.


I think that was done with punch cards, one for each move. There was no
memory storage as we know it today.Memory was limited by the number to
tubes in the control. One tube for each two bits of data. They did
have mechanical relays the were used. Think pin ball machines.


John

No, I don't think so, John. What you're describing sounds like some of
the
commercial machines that came out in the mid-'50s, like the J&L Binotrol,
and the G&L Numericord.

I don't have access to the old reports anymore, but the MIT machine was
described as a computer-controlled machine. It had a vacuum-tube computer
controlling it. I don't recall if I ever read just what the functions of
the
computer were.

Ed Huntress





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