Hacker News Reader

My mind was absolutely blown by mercury delay line memory of the UNIVAC 1. The things we did before silicon dynamic memory were works of crazy engineering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory

View on HN

My favorite are the "glass delay line memory."

https://archive.org/details/TNM_Glass_computer_memories_-_Co...

Is this a Williams tube or a Mellon tube? I have seen ONE or these, and they used to be more numerous than pocket change, at least the ones that no longer worked. Unused they were treated like fine crystal, used like empty beer bottles.

I wanted to hook one up in a tv to see a 1" movie, or maybe a 3/4" movie with the aspect ratio but the refresh rate was really slow, so it was useful as a memory.

I felt the same. It never even occurred to me that you could you use a physical compression wave in a fluid as memory in a real computer.

Here's a delightful snippet from that article btw:

> Alan Turing proposed the use of gin as an ultrasonic delay medium, claiming that it had the necessary acoustic properties.

We should build a computer that uses lasers and the Apollo retro-reflectors as delay-line memory.

It’ll be the largest computer in the solar system. Who’s in?

The European Space Agency is who.

https://www.lisamission.org/

I doubt they’d allow us to use the beams as data carriers…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com