Comment on Lost Generation: The Relay Computers by historyofhowweplay

Thanks for this very useful post on this oft-forgotten corner of computing history. I went looking specifically for info on relay computing and I was glad to find this, especially with some of the Differential Analyzer info I hadn't really seen before.

I had a look further into the Rockefeller machine and I found a 1945 paper "A New Type of Differential Analyzer" which describes the completed machine - though I'm not technical enough to parse it. I wasn't able to find any information about the interim development, though MIT apparently has a collection.

There's also an extremely early example of a relay being used for computing purposes in a public product: A coin-operated game called Spotlight Golf from the U.K. in 1936. It doesn't strictly count as a computing device, but it's extremely interesting that someone was using the potential of a digital relay even before Claude Shannon articulated his theories. It makes me wonder if there are more such devices from the time.