Cliff is always a joy to watch his energy and enthusiasm makes everything enjoyable
@Rafaga7777 жыл бұрын
What an contagious enthusiasm. He is the Dr. Emmet Brown of KZbin...
@233kosta7 жыл бұрын
Doc Brown's got nothing on Cliff!
@RaymondHng4 жыл бұрын
Great scott!
@KipIngram8 ай бұрын
Yes - RPN is solid gold. I used "regular" calculators in high school, but freshman year in college I bought an HP-41CV RPN calculator. And never looked back. It was the first device I ever programmed - it's what I LEARNED to program on. So my mind is "stack oriented" right from the start. Then I discovered Forth, and once again there was no looking back. I've written Forth systems numerous times over the years - it's a system one person can write, and it can be extended to do ANYTHING. It's BETTER.
@GoScience1237 жыл бұрын
I remember being taught Reverse Polish Notation in my cs class and being amazed just by that. I can't even imagine how much time went into getting a machine like this to work and basically being the first piece of technology to effectively implement Reverse Polish Notation. This is probably one of my favourite numberphile vids
@MD-pg1fh7 жыл бұрын
4:45 "where's a calculator" For a moment there, I thought he was going to adjust for inflation on his modern calculator and I'd have been so pissed that he didn't do it on the old one.
@omikronweapon6 жыл бұрын
Cliff wouldnt let us down like that :P
@necrisro7 жыл бұрын
Does he have his own show ? He should have his own show, this man is everything i need when i feel like the world is letting me down and can't enjoy anything.
@jackkorzenowski88974 жыл бұрын
For those wondering, the barred-L of Jan Łukasiewicz is in Polish pronounced like an English W. His name would be pronounced "Yahn Woo-kah-SHYEV-eech" (Oh--and the Polish letter J is pronounced like the English Y, hence "Jan" is indeed pronounced "Yahn")
@brianxyz7 жыл бұрын
$255 extra if you wanted automatic square root. That's quite the upgrade price! Could this calculator handle negative numbers?
@B1GB1RDB4G3L7 жыл бұрын
Cliff truly makes me happy - I rewatch the cliff playlist when I'm feeling down. Adding more videos to that playlist is great :)
@davidwise13025 жыл бұрын
As an Air Force Electronic Computer Systems Repairman in the late 70's, one of my correspondence courses included a section on that wire delay line memory. My source described the wire as being a special magneto-strictive nickel alloy which would deform when subjected to a magnetic field. Same basic idea and I'm sure that there were different variations on this design. For fun, read the first page of Asimov's first robot novel, "Caves of Steel", where he describes bits of data rippling through pools of mercury (mercury delay line memory was used in some early computers) and that the data readout was recorded onto a piece of wire (we had wire audio recorders long before the Germans came up with tape recording -- Bing Crosby liberated some of that German equipment towards the end of the war and then pioneered recording his radio programs). It's always fascinating to see how they used to do things.
@marcomaiocchi58082 жыл бұрын
Pic of Ramanujan right there. This guy is a legend.
@edwardteach8417 жыл бұрын
i love this man i wish there was just a boat load more content with him in it
@godminnette27 жыл бұрын
Is Cliff using a USB-MicroUSB cable in his demonstration instead of a piece of string? That's hilarious.
@philrod17 жыл бұрын
Godminnette2 - I saw a little irony in that. What a difference 55 years makes.
@SergeMatveenko7 жыл бұрын
I always use RPN calculators. Have them on the phone and on the PC. I really think that RPN deserves the whole separate video.
@nymalous34287 жыл бұрын
I really liked the part about torsional waves.Torsion is an under-appreciated aspect of physics...
@chrispza7 жыл бұрын
My first calculator (at work) was an HP-97, with a magnetic strip reader/writer - and, of course, RPN! I also remember working on an RCA transistor radio, where the (germanium) transistors were discrete sockets.
@EddyGurge7 жыл бұрын
I cannot get enough of Clifford.
@PRR19546 жыл бұрын
The "piano wire" delay/memory is very much like the slightly older Hammond Reverb, audio enhancement system. Even the delay time: "Dozens of mS" in the Friden, 35mS in a Hammond. Same torsional waves. Difference is the Hammond is driven "linear" and the Friden slams big bit-bangs onto the line. And Hammond encouraged end-reflection for multiple bounces, Friden must damp those somehow. And they are coiled differently-- Hammond like over-size pen springs to fit in a slim tank, Friden hose-coiled because they knew they had the room, and maybe their fatter wire didn't coil-up small. Be glad it was not the Mercury-tank delay/storage used in one of the early UK mainframes. More toxic Mercury than most people ever see.
@bryanc19752 жыл бұрын
I would love to work for Cliff. I would just be a lackey in his garage/laboratory, tinkering with stuff and handing him tools. All he'd have to do is buy me pizza and teach me about stuff. 😄
@mattsadventureswithart57645 жыл бұрын
Such enthusiasm is absolutely joyful to watch
@samsoncooper17 жыл бұрын
I so wish I was taught by someone as eccentric as this. He's amazing
@yungnut42477 жыл бұрын
I’ve never seen someone who looks as happy as this guy!
@harleyspeedthrust40135 жыл бұрын
I love reverse polish notation because it makes everything easier. I wrote a Java library that parses postfix expressions and can symbolically differentiate them; and I was able to do it because I didn't have to worry about writing a parser that knows order of operations thanks to the nature of postfix notation
@Skylos7 жыл бұрын
1:47 He litterally jumps from excitement. I love this man
@TapadeepChakraborty7 жыл бұрын
Who doesn't love watching his videos?
@w2quick7 жыл бұрын
dead people
@RWBHere7 жыл бұрын
I don't not love watching them. ;-p
@TheMaplestrip7 жыл бұрын
I really want to see how big the smile on Brady's face at 4:29.
@topilinkala15943 жыл бұрын
RPN is just how people calculate on paper: To add two numbers on paper you write them down and then add. You don't add and write them down, thats the polish notation, nor do you write one number down add and then write the second number down, which is infix. So I find it very peculiar that people say that RPN is hard and counter intuitive. If you want RPN calculator check what HP offers. They don't cost a dime but neither are the low end ones too expensive.
@daveb50417 жыл бұрын
Was the Cliff the inspiration for the doc in back to the future? He is just like him.
@thoperSought6 жыл бұрын
I love RPN so much.
@OlafDoschke7 жыл бұрын
One nice thing about RPN also is, you can stay with the order of operands, eg (3+4)x5 = 3,4,+,5,x The operators will simply take the first two values from the stack as operands and operate on them.
@dlevi676 жыл бұрын
+Olaf Doschke "you can stay with the order of operands" - not necessarily: 3 + 4 * 5 requires you to re-sort (as 5,4,*,3,+ for example), as does 5 * (3 + 4)
@freshrockpapa-e7799 Жыл бұрын
@@dlevi67just do 3 4 5 * +, and for the second one 5 3 4 + *, no sorting required
@dlevi67 Жыл бұрын
@@freshrockpapa-e7799 Fair enough, but both your examples involve resorting the operators... which admittedly are not operands. However, resorting it is.
@imnotcarbin98995 жыл бұрын
i love this guy already
@rickalexander28014 жыл бұрын
Would have liked to have seen a photo of Carl Friden (my grandfather) in the background.
@commenter47992 жыл бұрын
Some nerds insist that RPN mode is superior. They are correct. I put my HP Prime in RPN mode and it's hard to go back to other calculators. Problem is, it does screw up certain apps and make some of the more complicated functions difficult or impossible.
@Anklejbiter5 жыл бұрын
I have ADHD and yet I've never had as much energy as this man.
@johngibbs32237 жыл бұрын
I still use RPN on an HP-41c calculator simulator running on my iPhone... Not sure if that's meta or just bizarre, but I LOVE RPN. It's so much faster and sweeter than the standard way calculators work today.
@peglor7 жыл бұрын
I use Realcalc on Android for the same reason. It shows multiple registers at a time, and you can swap registers around. Far superior to the single register displays on most calculators. My desk calculator is a 23 year old Casio that's still running the battery it shipped with. I've been using it so long I even found a (Very minor) bug in its code.
@dlevi676 жыл бұрын
FWIW my desk calculator is an HP28C - real, not simulated.
@robertlozyniak36615 жыл бұрын
@@peglor Which particular Casio calculator, and what is the bug?
@johngibbs32237 жыл бұрын
So in order for the memory to be continuous, it has to cycle, right? Like when the "on" torsion wave gets to the end, it's recycled to the beginning and transmits again? Is that the way this thing worked? If so, the length of the wire determined how many bits you could store, right? Just trying to wrap my head around this--what a cool storage system!
@AlRoderick7 жыл бұрын
John Gibbs Computerphile did a video about it in the context of building a reproduction of one of Harvard's early computers, those used five foot pipes full of mercury.
@rrp64056 жыл бұрын
this guy makes me so happy :)
@someonespadre2 жыл бұрын
I have 2 Monroe mechanical calculators, the logic is similar to RPN. Type in number, crank to add to register, type in number, crank forward to add or backward to subtract. Keep cranking forward to multiply. The older bigger one works. The little one I hope to get it working.
@drahunter2135 жыл бұрын
Acoustic memory is something I never heard of...but wouldn’t that have applications for today’s technology? That acoustic memory sounds incredible
@macartm7 жыл бұрын
It's cool to see Cliff on KZbin. That reminds me, I haven't read The Cuckoo's Egg in a long time :)
@toropazzoide7 жыл бұрын
4:52 "Where's the calculator?" what? Are we playing Dora now? Isn't it right there? a big ass calculator :D
@ShortMan_1237 жыл бұрын
I love his enthusiasm- he's also like a real life Doctor Emmet Brown!
@BillKilmerslayer5 жыл бұрын
This guy is a treasure
@PinchOfLuck7 жыл бұрын
If immortality would be in a pill, this guy should get it. :D
@meghanstrudwick41005 жыл бұрын
Friden: *makes billions of pounds selling calculators* SHARP and Casio: I'm about to end this man's whole career...
@daveb50417 жыл бұрын
I would love to record this guys voice to a record then use his voice to scratch in samples into music on my turn tables. "Plink! plank.There goes the bit"
@RMoribayashi7 жыл бұрын
Did you ever get a microphone too close to a speaker and hear the howl? That was an acoustic memory of the sound. The Friden cleaned up the pulses (1's and 0's) and amplified them before sending them back around the wire several times second, over and over. The longer the wire the more bits you could put in the memory loop.
@loganv04104 жыл бұрын
I remember my HP35 and HP45, both of which used RPN I found it so easy to use once I understood it
@borys6666 жыл бұрын
About last part: those are acoustic waves - there is no need for another term. Rayleigh waves (seismic) are acoustic too-based on mechanical movement of environment they propagate in.
@whoeveriam0iam142227 жыл бұрын
still don't know how sending things through a long wire works as a memory. it just seems to delay the output but doesn't really store anything?
@oqardZ7 жыл бұрын
Few things to think about: - a torsion wave in the string has some finite velocity of propagation down the string, v - if you "pluck" the string every t seconds, you can say that bits are separated by v*t -- that's a bit length - capacity of string is its length divided by the bit length, c - for each bit read at the end of string, write it again at the beginning of the string
@unclvinny7 жыл бұрын
I wondered this, too! Wikipedia has a great article on it, search for "delay line memory". The type used in the Friden calculators was "magnetostrictive", seems like a relative of the piezoelectric effect, but results in a twist. Super cool!
@jadegecko7 жыл бұрын
ogardZ, so it functions as a loop, where the computer itself only needs to repeat what it's just 'heard,' and the delay provides enough space to put in a lot of bits before the computer 'hears' the same bit again?
@pitthepig7 жыл бұрын
jadegecko I think so. That's why they were called also sequential access memory. You have to wait for every loop to go through to retrieve a specific bit. Random Access Memory, instead, let's you access information at any direction of the memory at any time.
@oqardZ7 жыл бұрын
jadegecko, pitthepig Yes, exactly.
@raiedahmednishat88837 жыл бұрын
I guess you could say this was a calculator UNBOXING
@mbalicki7 жыл бұрын
The name “Jan Łukasiewicz” is pronounced as /jän wu.kä.'ɕɛ.vit͡ʂ/, so roughly as “yahn wooh-kah-shyeh-veech”.
@JmanNo426 жыл бұрын
Well logic is amazing but how those engineers come up with such ideas, and how the manage to implement them, there are truly talented people in this world.
@dogphlap67497 жыл бұрын
I use Hewlett Packard Reverse Polish Notation calculators in preference to any other type. As far as I understand it HP had a patent on the use of RPN in calculators which prevented others from making RPN calculators (or at least would have required them to have paid royalties to HP) so RPN never really took off except for engineers and financial types using HP RPN Scientific or Financial calculators. Shame I think in terms of RPN, its always seemed to me the natural way to work. Perhaps I'm just weird, I use an RPN calculator on my LInux running desktop computer also.
@nevillediener14956 жыл бұрын
I was wondering how transverse waves would not get stuck where the wire is supported. Torsional or longitudinal waves would not but I only thought of longitudinal not torsional. Brilliant!
@Kukilet7 жыл бұрын
Greetings from Poland ;) BTW. if you want to speak his name more correctly "cz" at the end of Łukasiewicz's name, you should say like "ch" like in chicken ;)
@AntonioBarba_TheKaneB7 жыл бұрын
kukilet //Dawid B. how is the first letter pronounced?
@Kukilet7 жыл бұрын
similar to english w
@mbalicki7 жыл бұрын
@Antonio Barba: The name “Jan Łukasiewicz” is pronounced as /jän wu.kä.'ɕɛ.vit͡ʂ/, so roughly as “yahn wooh-kah-shyeh-veech”.
@Danny1986il7 жыл бұрын
I think that in 4:00 he meant to say 2 enter, 3 enter, 5 times, plus. Instead, he omitted the plus at the end. Or did a misunderstood?
@FairPlay1375 жыл бұрын
One disadvantage of acoustic memory I would imagine would be any physical impacts causing memory to screw up and get corrupted.
@joehopfield6 ай бұрын
RPN FTW❤
@laptok7 жыл бұрын
RPN, Jan Łukasiewicz :) Pozdrowienia od polskiego widza Numberphile :)
@superj1e2z67 жыл бұрын
Come on Brady, change the channel pic to tau.
@w2quick7 жыл бұрын
Fite me!
@lubomirsalgo76387 жыл бұрын
Maybe for some non-mathematical channel?
@munjee27 жыл бұрын
That would be an *irrational* thing to do
@AndorianBlues7 жыл бұрын
Put a 0 after the 2, then it'd be tau in base pi
@IIARROWS7 жыл бұрын
Pi is too...
@hingedelephant6 жыл бұрын
Camera is pointing at the Fridan...”How much is this thing worth?? Where’s a calculator???”
@elliottmanley51827 жыл бұрын
When I started learning Japanese I was the only one in the class not to be baffled by their grammar. I put this down to having learnt RPN in the 70s. Japanese is a sort of RPN language!
@Darkstar23427 жыл бұрын
That's exactly what I though too. I was like "oh, Japanese has a really easy grammar" and everyone else was just looking at me like "wtf dude?" :-D
@telotawa7 жыл бұрын
Jan Łukasiewicz is pronounced more like "yan wukashevich" (this is still a tiny bit off because polish consonant sounds aren't exactly the same as in english, but close enough)
@borys6666 жыл бұрын
more like "woo.." similar to "WOOkie"
@MotionRideVideos6 жыл бұрын
4:15 Yan Wookashevitch. ;)
@dlevi676 жыл бұрын
2 + 3 * 5 - who remembers the old TI adverts about ""real algebraic entry" from the mid-70s
@edwarddoyle25094 жыл бұрын
You buried the good part about reverse polish notation (RPN) in an extra video !?? RPN has been used in computers from the 60's (maybe earlier) until today, It is how the calculations like (2 + 3) * 5 are done. Computers solve this like the following: 2, 3, plus, 5, times --- push 2, push 3, add (pop 2 and 3 add them, push the sum(5)), push 5, multiply (pop 5 and another 5, multiply and push the product on the stack) 25 the answer is left on the top of the stack. It is beautiful. Jan Łukasiewicz was born Dec 21, 1878 and invented a similar notation in 1924 (from Wikipedia). Hey Google, Dr. Lukasiewicz deserves a doodle!!
@technoturkey55287 жыл бұрын
Ploonk Plank Ploonk Plank GlGlGlGlgloorrmp is all you needed for your script.
@topilinkala15943 жыл бұрын
When I bought my first PC in early 80's I was working in express mail service in central Helsinki. When in a coffee room I told what I'd done everybody asked how could I aford it. I looked around perplexed and asked: "You always brag about buying new cars and no-one asks how you can afford them. When I, who don't even own a driver's license, buy a computer instead of a car you wonder how can I afford it." They went silent. On same side I was in a public sauna when I heard people talking about maintenance cost of their cars and I told them that my car costs me exactly 7000 FIM (this was before euros). They said that one cannot even get car insurace on that sum so I must be lying. I told them that the year pass for Helsinki public transportation cost 1800 FIM and that leaves 5200 FIM unaccounted for and that is 100 FIM per week for taxi. Then they asked do I spend 100 FIM every week on taxi and I said of course not, but in some week I might use 200 FIM on taxi. So the next question was that if I bought something big and needed to bring home how can I do it in public transportation and I answered that that what the taxi was for. They had no more questions.
@vorqoo6 жыл бұрын
5:56 Does he knit? (Knitting needles on top left hand corner)
@RWBHere7 жыл бұрын
So how many bits of data can be travelling along that delay line at any one time? In other words, what is its capacity, please? I see about 16 turns on the wire, top and bottom, but don't know the average diameter or data propagation speed along it. Cliff does mention one or two figures for propagation delay, but not the clock speed, which might be another way of determining the capacity, assuming that more than one piece of data is on the wire at any time. Thanks.
@omikronweapon6 жыл бұрын
seeing the amount of digits on the screen, with a max of 9 in each of them, I'd guess that's a realistic approximation of the maximum
@markblacket89006 жыл бұрын
so that memory line is basically an audio feedback loop, right? and the one thing i completely don't get is how the machine recognized the beginning of the stored data when reading from that memory
@audiodood3 жыл бұрын
1:50 my heart skipped a beat lol
@blademaster027 жыл бұрын
what happens if you divide by zero?
@w2quick7 жыл бұрын
you get an inconsistent result
@JaxMerrick7 жыл бұрын
The memory wire snaps to prevent the breaking of maths.
@heyandy8897 жыл бұрын
This is a great question. Today, there are built-in rules to detect division by zero: not allowed. But what if those safeguards didn't exist? What would happen? It's a fascinating question, and it would depend on the architecture of each calculator. I believe I saw Matt Parker talking about it on one of these videos at some point ... might be time for a little research.
@richfiles7 жыл бұрын
I belive the EC-130 and EC-132 end up in an infinite loop that has to be manually stopped by pressing the CLEAR DISPLAY key to reset.
@100percentSNAFU6 жыл бұрын
The universe implodes!
@TheRandomSpectator5 жыл бұрын
So I understand how the bits were represented on that wire, but I still don't understand how they were _stored_ on the wire.
@vxcvbzn7 жыл бұрын
The polish logician's name should be pronounced as "Yan Wucashievich" in the best approximation
@tengkuizdihar7 жыл бұрын
*PLINK PLANK*
@joehopfield6 ай бұрын
Electroacoustic memory!😮
@russellwarren95957 жыл бұрын
does plank = 1 and plonk = 0 ??
@rageagainstthebath7 жыл бұрын
Proud to be Polish electronics engineer.
@Darkstar23427 жыл бұрын
Why does he have a scan of an old German 10DM bank note on the wall? Is there a story behind it, other than that it having a picture of Gauss on it?
@PooperScooperTrooper7 жыл бұрын
The real Doc Brown!
@gabest47 жыл бұрын
Cars should also cost $1 today!
@233kosta7 жыл бұрын
Go ahead and make one :D
@adb0127 жыл бұрын
The difference between a calculator and a car is that miniaturization can happen in calculators with the limit of a visible display and usable keyboard. We have had calculator watches back in the 80's. The size of the car, on the other hand, is constrained by the size of the payload, the size and weight of the payload constrains the size and weight of the structure, which in turn constrains the required power of the engine. There are remote-controlled planes of the size of a pocket calculator. But while the pocket calculator is still useful to calculate, the pocket airplane is just a toy that can't take you, your family and 3 luggage pieces 400 miles out.
@RWBHere7 жыл бұрын
It could be done, out of paper and a few pieces of card, but it would have trouble with reverse Polish.
@AaronHollander3145 жыл бұрын
A car from the 1960s could be made for a dollar today. However if you want modern safety features and Technology you're going to have to pay more.
@KasranFox7 жыл бұрын
Oh no, they made playing cards... I collect playing card decks. Something tells me this is gonna be one of those pieces my collection will never have.
@AlbySilly7 жыл бұрын
I'm really interested in that memory. Does anyone know of videos explaining it in more depth?
@EgadsNo7 жыл бұрын
Average cost of a new car bought in the US is ~$33,500.00 now.
@scottmuck6 жыл бұрын
What’s the purpose of sending the information down the piano wire? I get that it delays the information by a few milliseconds... but why? What does the delay accomplish?
@Eylrid7 жыл бұрын
They charged an extra $250 for the square root function.
@PplsChampion5 жыл бұрын
polish tip - the polish Ł is pronounced like a W sound not an L sound
@DrMcCoy6 жыл бұрын
Heh, it's been a while since I last saw a 10DM note
@jhyland875 жыл бұрын
I don't quite understand how that's considered "memory", it sounds more like it's just sending data via vibrations over the wire... But how is that holding onto the data as "memory".
@fritz462 жыл бұрын
You have to loop it. After the vibration gets to the end of the wire, it is amplified and fed back into the beginning. So the bits are kind of circling through the wire for so long as you need them. The longer the wire, the more bits "fit" onto it.
@Saki6307 жыл бұрын
We need another video for just the Torsional-Wave memory. Please.
@joinedupjon7 жыл бұрын
my poundstore calculator only does 11 dps of sqrt(2) and that's with a bit of fiddling to display the last one
@dbeierl6 жыл бұрын
I expect the reason they hide the last one or two is they're probably wrong. HP calls them guard digits, I think.
@saez6577 жыл бұрын
Few people make it till here...
@saturn92275 жыл бұрын
4:26 someone’s exited
@ALPHONSE25017 жыл бұрын
So... that coil is works as torsion bar?
@blauw677 жыл бұрын
I'm curious to know what happens when one divides by 0
@whoeveriam0iam142227 жыл бұрын
time to confuse myself when this video comes out of unlisted
@frankharr94666 жыл бұрын
I wonder if I should make some playing cards for my number-related thing I'm trying to sell. ;)