I spend a lot it time thinking about how I know how to talk to the thinking rocks better than most people, and even give them complex instructions, but I don’t actually know why the rocks think or how to make them think. It’s troubling. I’m not even really sure how to make a steam engine
Rocks think because of the semiconducting effect and you can lithograph that into silicon. Logically it’s all just relays wired up weirdly
A relay is nothing but an electrically powered switch. If not done as semiconductors they are just a bunch of electric magnets
If you are interested in „how to make a computer from an electrically powered switch?“ the book „CODE the secret language of computers“ is fun and easy to read
I hope that when civilisation collapses someone will think I’m valuable enough to give food to due to knowing how to make these things from scratch. I fear nobody will
The tricky thing about the steam engine is the pressure ventile regulator. Is two weights that rotate around an axis and are attached to it in a way that their position to the centre of the axis varies with speed. Now when they move away from the axle, they open a ventile to lower pressure
Now the force that turns the axle with the weights is the pressure and that way you have a feedback loop letting the engine run at a stable pressure. Not the most efficient but a pretty safe way to make it run at a certain pressure
Now if you connect it to be driven not by the pressure but to the wheel/shaft that you use for your machine you have a mechanism to have a stable rpm no matter the load
Thank you for this, I learned a lot!
My pleasure!
The second important thing is recycling the waste heat a second time to increase efficiency, similar to modern central gas heatings