Air Powered Segment Display? [video]
youtube.comWow, this is underrated. The start of the video cuts between a few other inventions this creator made using air. They discussed using air for digital logic gates generally.
Really neat stuff I hadn’t thought about before!
If the active elements were convex instead of concave, I can imagine this being useful for people with visual impairments. How does this compare to existing technologies for braille displays?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display
The technology hasn't changed at all since the 1992 film Sneakers with the blind character Whistler. https://youtu.be/GS3npSv8iuM?t=124
If you liked the pneumatic segmented display like I did, here is a meditative video on alternative segmented displays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTB5XhjbgZA
No affiliation, just one of my favourite videos.
Dupe from a few days ago [1], but glad this is gaining some attention. Truly remarkable work.
Sometimes I wonder whether computing would have been possible if electricity and its related effects could not be harnessed for logic and computation. In that alternate universe I could imagine us creating quite sophisticated devices running off of compressed air; perhaps not to the atomic level of precision we can achieve with solid state devices, but extremely capable nonetheless.
Charles Babbage designed his difference engine that was mechanical and used punch cards for loading programs. The machine was mechanical and used a steam engine to power it.
And they weren't just hypothetical curiosities. Many companies manufactured variants of the concept.
Desktop mechanical adding machines continued to be used in offices all the way up to the 1970s when electronics finally replaced them.
Manipulating free electrons in electronic logical devices has important advantages in enabling miniaturization, low energy consumption, high speed and long life, but it is possible to make logical devices, including computers, using a great variety of other techniques.
You can easily make logical gates, automata or complete computers using pneumatic or hydraulic or electro-mechanical or purely mechanical devices.
These 4 kinds are still in use in certain applications, where their advantages remain important, but even more implementation techniques are possible, for instance with optical devices or with devices based on controlling ionic flows instead of electron flows or with devices based on controlling the kinetics of chemical reactions (i.e. an enzyme whose activity can be modulated, e.g. it can be inhibited, can be seen as the equivalent of a transistor or a relay, because it can allow or prevent the conversion between 2 chemical substances, i.e. the flow of matter between the 2 substances, like a relay can allow or prevent the flow of electrical current). The latter 2 kinds of devices are exemplified by the living beings.
Rocky would approve.
niche
Amaze. Amaze. Amaze.
I bet you can reproduce the look on Cheap Yellow Display for 5€.
This also looks like a real thing any further than a foot: https://youtube.com/shorts/JlYUZN7aw20?si=a_DspL_Ct2NLSyaO
A whole new type of "vacuum tube"
It becomes more interesting when you couple a flexible display with it.
...especially if that display could be a touch screen...
It's been tried with fluid instead of air.
https://www.engadget.com/this-oled-screen-can-fill-with-liqu...
Link to video from article:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=j_rErbhxNFM
They show a few other interesting actuators in first 20 seconds of video.
sometimes humans are awesome.