Analog Technologies

When I worked at IBM as a college student in the late 1970s, the company was in the midst of converting the computers it made from analog to digital. I clearly remember trying to understand what those two terms meant. Or, more exactly, I remember not having any way of understanding that I should be able to grasp the terms.

I can't even explain what I mean. The concept of analog as a way of the world existing was so basic, so inherent in the way things were, that to have it be different in some way... and then to say that digital meant instead things would be 0s and 1s? It just didn't make any sense. 

Why did that matter? What effect would it have? I didn't use these terms, but what I meant was: how would that reality be operationalized in the world?

I had no idea what it would mean, which is why I was never an engineer or a creator of technology. I always have had to see how things were applied before I could use them.

I mentioned the Art-O-Graph in passing a couple of days ago. That's a great example of an analog technology breakthrough that was very successful and increased productivity in a particular field (commercial art), then the field of map-making, with the Map-O-Graph. It provided a non-photography way to resize artwork accurately.

Here are some photos of what the Art-O-Graph looked like:

In the present with its digital artwork, the idea that you would need such a machine is just... unthinkable. What? Why would you need a separate machine to do something as simple as resizing the artwork? 

It's not the same thing, but digital images make me think of projectors. Remember overhead projectors (used with transparencies)? 

And even more odd, remember opaque projectors? Those were descendants of the Art-O-Graph. Here's what some of them looked like:

I used an opaque projector just like this one into the 1990s when I was teaching in grad school. 

And then everything changed.