The Collaborative International Dictionary
Computer \Com*put"er\ (k[o^]m*p[=u]t"[~e]r), n.
One who computes.
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(Computers) an electronic device for performing calculations automatically. It consists of a clock to provide voltage pulses to synchronize the operations of the devices within the computer, a central processing unit, where the arithmetical and logical operations are performed on data, a random-access memory, where the programs and data are stored for rapid access, devices to input data and output results, and various other peripheral devices of widely varied function, as well as circuitry to support the main operations.
Note: This modern sense of computer comprises the stored-program computers, in which multiple steps in a calculation may be stored within the computer itself as instructions in a program, and are then executed by the computer without further intervention of the operator. Different types of computer are variously called analog computer, number cruncher, number-cruncher, digital computer, and pari-mutuel machine, totalizer, totaliser, totalizator, totalisator.
Syn: data processor, electronic computer, information processing system.
(Computers) same as digital computer.
analog computer \analog computer\ analogue computer \analogue computer\n. a computer that represents information by continuously variable quantities (e.g., positions or voltages).
Wiktionary
n. A computer (mechanical, electrical or other) that processes using continuously varying signals rather than digital, quantized, values.
WordNet
n. a computer that represents information by variable quantities (e.g., positions or voltages) [syn: analogue computer]
Wikipedia
An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the continuously changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved. In contrast, digital computers represent varying quantities symbolically, as their numerical values change. As an analog computer does not use discrete values, but rather continuous values, processes cannot be reliably repeated with exact equivalence, as they can with Turing machines. Unlike digital signal processing, analog computers do not suffer from the quantization noise, but are limited by analog noise.
Analog computers were widely used in scientific and industrial applications where digital computers of the time lacked sufficient performance. Analog computers can have a very wide range of complexity. Slide rules and nomographs are the simplest, while naval gunfire control computers and large hybrid digital/analog computers were among the most complicated. Systems for process control and protective relays used analog computation to perform control and protective functions.
The advent of digital computing and its success made analog computers largely obsolete in 1950s and 1960s, though they remain in use in some specific applications, like the flight computer in aircraft, and for teaching control systems in universities.
Usage examples of "analog computer".
Prity and Emerson were helpful at making the analog computer work, and so were books Kurt hand-carried from Biblos.
But Uriel's machine has similar traits-an analog computer that no satellite or spaceship can detect, because it uses no electricity and has no digital cognizance.
A complete EAI TR-20 analog computer from the sixties, a 1956 Heath electronic analog kit computer, an Altair 8800 and 680b computers, a twenty-five-year-old IBM 510 portable, a Commodore KIM-1, the famous TRS-80, a Kaypro portable, a COSMAC VIP, a number of Apples and Macs, tubes from the original Univac, brass gears and a number disk from a prototype of Charles Babbage’.
A complete EAI TR-20 analog computer from the sixties, a 1956 Heath electronic analog kit computer, an Altair 8800 and 680b computers, a twenty-five-year-old IBM 510 portable, a Commodore KIM-1, the famous TRS-80, a Kaypro portable, a COSMAC VIP, a number of Apples and Macs, tubes from the original Univac, brass gears and a number disk from a prototype of Charles Babbage's never-completed Difference Engine from the 1800s and notes about it jotted down by Ada Byron -Lord Byron's daughter and Babbage's companion - who wrote instructions .
A complete EAI TR-20 analog computer from the sixties, a 1956 Heath electronic analog kit computer, an Altair 8800 and 680b computers, a twenty-five-year-old IBM 510 portable, a Commodore KIM-1, the famous TRS-80, a Kaypro portable, a COSMAC VIP, a number of Apples and Macs, tubes from the original Univac, brass gears and a number disk from a prototype of Charles Babbage's never-completed Difference Engine from the 1800s and notes about it jotted down by Ada Byron -Lord Byron's daughter and Babbage's companion - who wrote .
The torleta went back to the thirteenth century and was actually an analog computer used to solve trigonomic problems.
What we need is an analog computer to sum up the scanning pattern picked up by the camera tube and then pass this information along in code form.
Someone had once told Jerrodd that the ac at the end of Microvac stood for analog computer in ancient English, but he was on the edge of forgetting even that.