Before revision: 10-component tide-predicting machine of 1872-3 , conceived by Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), and designed by Thomson and collaborators, at the Science Museum, South Kensington, London A tide-predicting machine was a special-purpose mechanical analog computer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, constructed and set up to predict the ebb and flow of sea tides and the irregular variations in their heights – which change in mixtures of rhythms, that never (in the aggregate) repeat themselves exactly.See American Mathematical Society (2009) II.2, showing how combinations of waves in non-commensurable frequencies cannot repeat their resultant patterns exactly.
After revision: 10-component tide-predicting machine of 1872-73 , conceived by Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), and designed by Thomson and collaborators, at the Science Museum, South Kensington, London A tide-predicting machine was a special-purpose mechanical analog computer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, constructed and set up to predict the ebb and flow of sea tides and the irregular variations in their heights – which change in mixtures of rhythms, that never (in the aggregate) repeat themselves exactly.See American Mathematical Society (2009) II.2, showing how combinations of waves in non-commensurable frequencies cannot repeat their resultant patterns exactly.