Digital Life »Projects & adventures
Wooden computers…thinking outside the board
beingzoe almost 2 years ago | 1 response    

As fans of steampunk computing have known for a while, digital devices don’t need to be shiny plastic, beige boxes, or even high tech. Quite the contrary, people are finding more and more unique ways to mod their digital high tech devices so they don’t appear high tech at all.

Matthias Wandel, a “tech geek” and woodworker, is creating all sorts of unique and interesting objects, devices, and mods that you might not expect. Sure he does more traditional woodworking like bed frames, large picture frames, and some pretty classy workbench drawers.

But it is his wooden machines that really caught my eye.

His wooden binary adding machine (featured in video and pictured above) was a brilliant bit of engineering and craftsmanship. This unique invention allows you to add numbers in binary.

At the top of the wooden computational device are slots and holes where you would input the number being added. There are slots representing 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32. So to add “1 + 5”, we first set a marble on the “1” slot at the top of the machine. Then push a lever which releases the marble to mechanics of the device, essentially storing our first digit in the “memory” of the machine. Next we have to enter “5” into the machine, which is accomplished in this binary system by placing one marble in the “1” slot and one in the “4” slot (1+4=5). Then we push the lever again to insert the 5 we are adding to the mechanics. Now the marbles flip and turn the internal mechanics to store our temporary result. At this point we could add another number, but we are going to simply ask for our result. To get the result you push another lever at the bottom of the machine, which resets the device (clears the memory) and drops the result of our simple equation into the result tray at the bottom. In our example of “1+5”, the result given in binary is a marble in the “4” slot and the “2” slot, which evaluates to “6”.

Pretty nifty stuff, and apparantly Wandel thinks so too…

It had occurred to me that perhaps with an insane amount of perseverance, it might be possible to build a whole computer that runs on marbles. My second marble machine was however much less based on logic – more on just making lots of cool noise.

I don’t know how marbles will go over as an input device. This version of the adding machine is limited to a 6-bit storage capacity (translated: can only count up to 63 before resetting to 0). Given the size and scope of a wooden/marble computer, it seems unlikely, even with “insane perseverance” to go over well with present day quadcore 64-bit computing technology. (I tried to make a funny joke out of this but have given up). But if it did come to market I would have to get one just to experience the amazing racket all those marbles would make. While the wooden marble binary adding machine may not be extremely practical, it does demonstrate binary counting well, in a way even the self proclaimed computer illiterate can comprehend.

This guy is so ingenius back in 2002 he even designed a working wooden/electronic cd-changer device for batch burning CDs. I say wooden/electronic because as Wandel says at his site…

My first thought was to come up with something extremely simple, with no electronics. Ideally, the motion of the cd tray would trip some sort of mechanism that would eject the CD from the tray and insert the next one. After months of thinking, I still hadn’t thought of a cd changing mechanism that had a hope of actually working.

Nonetheless it is a fine bit of engineering and worth having a look.

All you case modders out there might enjoy Wandel’s wooden computer case . This project is obviously a little older as it is only sporting a Pentium 4, but it is neat simple case. I see things like this and I wonder why computer design has been so limited all these years. Wandel’s case is a simple and functional box, but with his in-depth discussion on how he did it, you could go on to make all manner of unique and interesting case mods.

Lastly I wanted to share the wooden combination lock . While not a digital device, I’m just really impressed by the creative work Wandel put’s into his projects. His design is an example of a single dial sequential combination lock and like his adding machine gives a clear understanding how this type of locking mechanism actually works.

Like most real combination lock, such as a Dudley or master combination lock, the core of the lock consists of three rotors. Each rotor has a notch in it, and when the three notes are lined up, some sort of bar can drop into them, and allow the lock to be opened.

In this video demonstrating the wooden combination lock , Wandel also discovers a vulnerability in the classic master lock design. And in this video he discusses how this style of lock isn’t limited to a ‘right-left-right’ opening sequence , and any combination of directions will work, demonstrating a ‘left-right-left’ sequence (with instructions on how to calculate the ‘left-right-left’ sequence).

As I mentioned at the top of this article, Matthias Wandel is also a “tech geek” (in the most affectionate reference possible) and you can see some of his other tech stuff here . From a Duplicate file finder and eliminator to a Building a scanning camera from a flatbed scanner and all the woodworking genius, Matthias Wandel is a true modern Renaissance Man and we salute his inventiveness.

Be sure to visit woodworking.ca and his personal site to learn more.

All images and videos are from Matthias Wandel’s websites.

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