Enter Analogue Computers

Back in the late 1970s, owning a digital watch was a supremely exciting thing! Instead of trying to figure out the time from slowly rotating hands (as you would have to do with an old-style analog watch) you could just easily read off a digital display. Now pretty much everything seems to be digital, from television and radio to music players, cameras, cellphones, and even books. What's the difference between analog and digital technology? Which is best? Let's take a closer look!

Lesson 2 PowerPoint

*includes starter, class content and tasks

Analogue: Until computers started to dominate science and technology in the early decades of the 20th century, virtually every measuring instrument was analog. If you wanted to measure an electric current, you did it with a moving-coil meter that had a little pointer moving over a dial. The more the pointer moved up the dial, the higher the current in your circuit. Digital: Digital is entirely different. Instead of storing words, pictures, and sounds as representations on things like plastic film or magnetic tape, we first convert the information into numbers (digits) and display or store the numbers instead.

Suggested Video - everything around you can become a computer!

Additional Reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/44691/water-based-computer

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/technology/future-internet-of-things.html