What are the really unusual or weird computers?

[Tim Shoppa]

Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
> > Tim Shoppa wrote:
> > [Special-purpose industrial controllers from the past 100 years]
> > but that's what it's working out to), much of it is still in service,
> > but I can see just a few years from now that a lot of it will be gone.
> >
> > Some of the more interesting military special-purpose computers
> > are being preserved (e.g. Norden bombsights) along with historical
> > context, but almost nothing else is.
>
>    Well this is clearly a problem.  I consider myself to be a person  
> having pretty general experience with technology, and I've never even  
> heard of this stuff...but it sounds very interesting to me.  Perhaps  
> what is needed is a way to "get the word out".  Pictures,  
> descriptions, educational materials...YOU know about this stuff, but  
> who else does?  I'd love to learn about it.

My main resources have been my day job (where else do you get hands-
on experience on a $10Billion peripheral made out of largely relay logic?),
the community there and at other properties (a community which is 
REMARKABLY not-web-based), and books from the 30's/40's/50's about
digital logic using relays, tubes, cryotrons, etc.

You are right, remarkably little of this is on the web.

Tim.