Abstract
A MECHANICAL calculating machine for solving simultaneous linear equations up to ten in number under construction at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Drs. V. Bush and J. B. Wilbur was referred to in NATURE of December 8 (p. 877). An electrical machine designed for the same purpose, also working up to ten equations, has already been designed by R. R. M. Mallock and constructed by the Cambridge Instrument Co., Ltd. A full account of this machine has been published (Proc. Roy. Soc., A, 140, 457; 1933) and a note on it appeared in NATURE of June 17, 1933 (p. 880). The machine itself is set up and at work in the Engineering Laboratory, Cambridge. It is stated that this machine can determine rapidly a set of roots to an accuracy represented by about 0 o 1 per cent of the largest root in favourable cases when the equations are well conditioned. The fundamental principle of the machine is to use a number of alternating current transformers, the coils of which are coupled up to such numbers of turns as to represent a set of equations of condition for the fluxes through the transformers which are the linear simultaneous equations to be solved. Such machines promise to be of great value in the very large number of problems which can be reduced to the solution of such sets of equations.
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Electrical Calculating Machine for Simultaneous Equations. Nature 135, 63 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135063a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135063a0