Analog

Hope you had some fun tinkering with that simple analog temperature comparator from the previous part. That circuit was stripped down to the bone – a classic “how to even do linear signal processing with op-amps” example. But the world doesn’t end at a comparator. You can build 4–20 mA → voltage converters, voltage → frequency, even a basic PID… But today let’s zero in on what used to actually be called an analog process computer. ...

To kick off our adventure with analog computing systems, let’s start with a bit of history. It all began in 1947 when John Bardeen and Walter Brattain built the first working transistor prototype using germanium at Bell Labs. Sidenote: in reality, many labs around the world were working on the concept, so it’s a collective achievement. The jump from bulky vacuum tubes to tiny transistors was a game-changer - it triggered explosive growth in electronics. The next big milestone came quickly: in 1967 Karl D. Swartzel developed the first operational amplifier - an electronic building block that could perform mathematical operations: ...