About five years ago, I found an old book, probably now an introuvable, Korn and Korn’s Electronic Analog Computers (D-c Analog Computers), 1956 [1].
Well, that mostly unrelated to today’s post, except that in some cases, relatively crude analog methods may give surprisingly good results in numerical problems (the topic came up while I was discussing the golden ratio and its place in art with friends, trying to make a point that it was mostly heuristic, bordering on the numerological). Take the pyramids, for example. The Ancient Egyptians did not have GPSes and laser guided telemetry. Yet, they managed to get some of their buildings incredibly well aligned with the celestial north.
Posted by Steven Pigeon 
