Rindis.com

Legos are wonderful things, they can be put to so many uses.

One fellow has gone so far as to create a simple difference engine entirely out of Legos. Difference engines were popular in the 19th century as they were handy for compiling solutions tables for complicated functions like logarithims, books of these were essential for many disciplines until the advent of modern calculators, and had generally been plagued with errors when computed by hand. He has obviously spent a lot of time on the project, and it sounds like he’s accounted for the natural problems of trying to do something precise with plastic Legos, and made it pretty robust. Smarter than I….

Another person has come up with a set of Lego-mechanical logic gates, the essence of modern computing functions. It sounds like they have a lot of problems, and hooking together more than a couple will immediately run into slippage ‘errors’. I wonder if anything could be done about that, but they already look pretty darn complicated.

I’ll also admit that the only thing I truly follow in both of these is the math theory of differences. I follow the general plan and function of the difference engine itself, but that’s only because Andy Carol has done a good job of explaining it all, and I didn’t entirely follow all of that. I generally understand logic functions, but the mechanics of these things are completely beyond me.

Still, it’s very fun to see what some people will do with their spare time!