A terabyte on the Odhner

Mechanical calculators are quite fun even today. This one was found at a fleamarket in a practically non functional condition. It has been disassembled completely; cleaned and oiled/greased. Now it's running almost as smooth as the day it left the factory. An absolute pleasure! :)

As an example of how to do chain multiplications I've chosen to calculate how many bytes a terabyte is. 1024 byte is a kilobyte and 1024 of those you've got a megabyte, again a gigabyte and once more, which is just within the limits of this Original-Odhner 239, you've got yourself a terabyte. Sweeet xD

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• terabyte
• calculator
• mechanical
• odhner
• vintage

[Dazzerlikestech1]

All a BYTE is a partical on hard drive platter, when its equal to 1, its storing info, and its magneticly charged, when a byte is equal to 0, its storing no info, and isnt magneticly charged, so 1 decobyte (10 bytes) is ten magneticly charged, storing info.

[HifiCentret]

@Dazzerlikestech1 Actually a byte is 8 bit. 1 bit can be either 1 or zero. When storing the information on a hard drive the plate is always magnetized. Whether there's stored ones or zeroes depends on the direction of the magnetization.

And I could could go on. But that lies outside this video to discuss here. The true architecture of a HD is quite complex ;)

[FreerunnerDave]

...isnt a terebyte memory???....someone help me out im not overly bright

[HifiCentret]

@FreerunnerDave You're absolutely correct. What's being displayed is how many bytes you need to have for a (binary/base 2) terrabyte represented in the decimal (base 10) system.

[UncleFeedle]

There's something extremely cool in turning a handle to process data!

[wompstopm123]

@FreerunnerDave he is using a prehistoric coculatur made of beees buuzzzzzz buzzzz buzzzzzz sting

[FreerunnerDave]

@HifiCentret ahh now it makes sense...thanks

[clixsyt]

HAHA. My old math teacher had one of these. We used to mess around with it when he wasn't looking.

[HTPtheSecond]

I would enjoy an Odhner calculator much more than my Casio fx-300ES.

[DrBPhD]

I only knew the electromechanical machines from stories from my dad, they were long gone when I entered university. I have always been curious to watch one in operation though. The interesting thing about youtube is that that has become possible nowadays, there have been some vids of electromechanical machines at work posted as well. Fascinating to watch.