A steel bar pivots. A spring stretches. Then, with a small shove, the whole setup flips into a new state and stays there until the next push. “We typically think of memory as something in a computer ...

Published in Nature Communications, researchers from St. Olaf College and Syracuse University built a computer made entirely of mechanical components that can perform simple computations without ...

Researchers have developed a kirigami-inspired mechanical computer that uses a complex structure of rigid, interconnected polymer cubes to store, retrieve and erase data without relying on electronic ...

Researchers have built mechanical computers from springs, bolts, and steel bars that can count, detect odd or even pushes, and remember force levels—all without electricity. These devices harvest ...

Nextbigfuture has covered the nanomechanical computer design created by Ralph Merkle, Robert Freitas, Tad Hogg, Thomas E. Moore, Matthew S. Moses and James Ryley several times. A team from UCLA and ...

Back in the 70’s when computers were fairly expensive and out of reach for most people, [David Hagelbarger] of Bell Laboratories designed CARDIAC: CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation. CARDIAC ...

The mechanical computers of yesterday may have been enormous, difficult to program, and amazingly clunky—but they sure were beautiful to watch in action. Released theatrically by Popular Science on ...

A single-celled organism that walks using 14 “legs” seems to control these legs with a mechanical computer made of fibres called microtubules. The finding might help explain how many other ...