Analog and Hybrid Computer Programming, 2nd Edition

6 Examples

The following chapter describes a variety of problems of differing complexity which have been solved using an analog computer. Reproducing these solutions on an analog computer is not only highly instructive but also very rewarding and, last but not least, fun.

6.1 Displaying polynomials

This first example is based on the idea outlined in section 5.4 and details how a polynomial

$p(x)=a{x}^3+b{x}^2+cx+d$

with coefficients a, b, c, and d in [−1, 1] can be displayed on an oscilloscope allowing a user to change the coefficients while immediately observing the effects on the polynomial.

This requires a little trick circuit to implement coefficients in [−1, 1] as shown in figure 6.1, which will be used in the polynomial circuit multiple ...