Charles Babbage developed a notation for the timing and interactions of mechanisms, which is being decoded by Doron Swade and others. They have in turn developed an ASCII version of the notation, called FORTRAC15 - you might want to use this for your next mechanical computer design! Blog post:
http://blog.plan28.org/2015/03/progress ... bages.htmlQuote:
Significant software tooling for FORTRAC is underway. We envisage inter-linking between graphical icons that are the notational symbols, 3D animations of parts, and FORTRAC15 textual descriptions. As a first stage we are building a tool that allows JPEG images of the notations to be annotated with FORTAC15 textual terms. We are now using this tool to capture all the Difference Engine No. 2 notations in machine readable form.
Read Babbage's description of his notation at
https://archive.org/stream/philtrans094 ... 0/mode/2upThe previous blog post has an example from Babbage:
http://blog.plan28.org/2014/11/babbages ... ought.html_Notation.jpg)
You can see some of Babbage's originals in the Colossus exhibit at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park (about an hour from London by train)
