Cardiac: CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation (1969)

Cardiac: CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation (1969)(cs.drexel.edu)

45 points by blewboarwastake 5 years ago | 9 comments

geomark 5 years ago |

There is an Instructable for making one yourself https://www.instructables.com/CARDIAC-CARDboard-Illustrative...

bregma 5 years ago |

My first computer. Inspired me to becomes a computer scientist when I was 10, in the early 1970s. I still have mine but the accumulator is burned out after too many write/erase cycles and I may have lost the "bug" (memory pointer). It's probably the only computer I have from last century that still works.

a4isms 5 years ago | |

Me too! My mother sent me to an enriched program on Saturdays, and one of the “classes” they had was called “Queries and Theories” after a very interesting game.

That class introduced me to Mathematical Recreations, Raymond Smullyan, and computing. We had a CARDIAC we played with, and later went to the University to write FORTRAN programs on punch cards.

dang 5 years ago |

One past thread:

CARDIAC simulator in JavaScript - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8348615 - Sept 2014 (5 comments - thanks miles)

CARDIAC Cardboard Computer Emulator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=641032 - June 2009 (5 comments)

Tangentially related:

PAPAC-00, a Do-It-Yourself Paper Computer (1958) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15026101 - Aug 2017 (12 comments)

I think there have been others...anyone?

Edit: A fun comment from a different thread (Aug 2012):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4416054

miles 5 years ago | |

Here's all I could find:

CARDIAC simulator in JavaScript (2014) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8348615

CARDIAC (2014) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8439443

Cardiac – A cardboard illustrative aid to computation (Bell Labs 1968) (2018) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18433504

Cardiac: Portable cardboard computer (2016) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12949393

dang 5 years ago | | |

Thanks! I've added https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8348615 to my comment above since it has comments.

Donckele 5 years ago | |

The dale miller domain for the link (dang) above is down.

adyer07 5 years ago |

This is delightful. The paper sliders are especially charming.

I wonder if the tactility of it helped make assembly easier to learn - or harder, because it didn't have immediate feedback.

jleyank 5 years ago |

It was a match that burned twice. First, you could play with the cardboard computer then you could use it as a prototype to make a software version. In my case it was a gateway into 370 compatible assembler on an rca/univac.