I don’t know if this is new to anyone else, but I’ve never understood how you build a mechanical computer...how do you solve math problems with gears? A dive down the rabbit hole of navy fire control computers opened my eyes.
Simply fascinating! Immediate calculations, zero electricity required, extremely robust and as accurate as the number of variables you can feed into it. limited scope? Gigantic? non-programable? Who cares. This blew my mind apart.