Comments on: Phonograph Disks Run Crewless War Tank

By: pureweevil

pureweevil — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:04:35 +0000

‘damn it! the enemy soldiers have moved 3 feet to the left again. it’s almost as if they can predict our every move.’

By: Absolute

Absolute — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:19:35 +0000

Despite years of progress in AI, we still haven’t got something that could navigate around a battle field unless you pre-programmed the route first. Look at the Mars rovers, yes they can pick their way over a few rocks but they are sooooo slow. The DARPA challenge is getting there but the systems still need a lot of testing and re-finement.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:25:57 +0000

Nice idea… in theory… Given the brittle nature of records then, I guess they’d last about three seconds. Of course, the big temptation would be to fill the driver with old 78rpm Spike Jones records, and see what happened…

By: The Vagabond Astronomer

The Vagabond Astronomer — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:36:36 +0000

@Neil,
Thanks for reminding me of the name of that toy! Always wanted one!
Looks like the tank used in the illustration is an FT-17; its track system was very rigid… the records would be destroyed by the jarring ride that tank had to offer!

By: Neil Russell

Neil Russell — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:32:15 +0000

The “Amaze A Matic”, I had two of them, the Ford GT40 and the yellow Chrysler show car. Always wanted the blue grey one, but now I can’t remember what it was.
And Baron is right, didn’t work worth a toot.
You had all the preprogrammed cards and then a bunch of blanks that you could “program” yourself.
Those didn’t work too well either.
A lot of toys in the 60s required a big expanse of hard floor to work, the irony is with home design like it is today, a lot of those cars, trucks, and trains would probably be popular.

By: Baron Waste

Baron Waste — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:39:59 +0000

You ever been in a running tank? Try playing a phonograph record in your car, while driving over a low-grade gravel road. See how well it works.

There was a toy sold in the ’60s similar to this – I used to have one. It was clever: A card fed at constant speed past two little spring-loaded linkages, which pressed against and followed scallops and valleys pre-cut in the edges of the card. One linkage controlled the steering; one the gear. You could thus run the car through a preset course, steering and stopping and backing and turning as desired. Of course, there was no feedback whatsoever; if the car was placed wrong at the start or the card was even slightly in error, the whole thing failed utterly. Probably why the toy didn’t last very longâ€¦

By: Neil Russell

Neil Russell — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:52:32 +0000

That could get embarrassing if one of the records got stuck.

However it does look a lot like an old hard disk array!