This is a fantastically busy week in the bay area for makers and hardware folk.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Hardware Innovation Workshop will be held at San Mateo College. Windell will be speaking on Wednesday afternoon; check out the agenda to see the full lineup of presenters.

On Thursday, we’ll be participating in Maker Faire Education Day with Super Awesome Sylvia and the WaterColorBot. If you’re a bay area teacher, you and your class should be there! If you’re a bay area student, make sure your teacher knows about this!

On Saturday and Sunday, the Bay Area Maker Faire is in full swing at the San Mateo County Event Center. We’ll be there with Super Awesome Sylvia and the WaterColorBot. Windell and I also mentor FIRST Robotics team 3501 from Fremont High School in Sunnyvale, and they will be there with their robot, Oddjob. I will be participating in the Parenting Young Makers panel on the Make: Education Stage at 2:00 pm on Sunday as well. The full Maker Faire schedule has been posted, and advance tickets are still available. If you’re planning on driving, check out the list of free parking lots with shuttles or in walking distance. 110,000 attendees were there last year— not a small party!

To spread the celebration a little further, we’re holding a DIY Fever sale in our shop now through Monday.

    

Over on instructables, SF Media Labs has posted a 1x1x1 LED Cube tutorial.

See also: Blink an LED with an AVR.

    

It was the 1960′s, and people were building some very interesting digital computers.   One of them was the Digi-Comp II, which we have written about extensively: a binary mechanical computer based on rolling marbles and flip-flop gates.

For an entirely different approach, look no further than How to Build a Working Digital Computer (1967) by Edward Alcosser, James P. Phillips, and Allen M. Wolk.  You can download it as a free e-book (PDF, EPUB, Kindle) at Archive.org, thanks to the BitSavers PDF Document archive.

How to Build a Working Digital Computer is both an introduction to the “new and exciting field of digital computers” and a set of plans to build one.  What’s especially interesting is that the plans don’t call for any specialized electronic components, but instead show how to build everything from parts that you might find at a hardware store: items like paper clips, little light bulbs, thread spools, wire, screws, and switches (that can optionally be made from paper clips).

That’s not to say that such a computer is necessarily simplistic. Arrays of paperclip logic gates can get pretty big, pretty fast.

The instructions include a read-only drum memory for storing the computer program (much like a player piano roll), made from a juice can, with read heads made from bent paper clips.   A separate manually-operated “core” memory (made of paper-clip switches) is used for storing data.

So can this “paper clip” computer actually be built, and if so, would it work?  Apparently yes, on both counts. Cleveland youngsters Mark Rosenstein and Kenny Antonelli built one named “Emmerack” in 1972 (albeit substituting Radio Shack slide switches for most of the paper clips), and another was built in 1975 by the Wickenburg High School Math Club in Arizona.  And, at least one modern build has been completed, as you can see on YouTube.

Photo credit: History of Computers, Computing and Internet

Perhaps more surprisingly, the “paper clip” computer was also the basis of the Arkay (later, Comspace) CT-650 computer trainer, a rare, early computer that seems to have been built directly from the plans in How to Build a Working Digital Computer.   

Photos of an original Comspace CT-650 posted recently at the Vintage Computer Forums show that this computer was a beautiful piece of work— no paper clips or tin cans in sight.

Although it’s a too small to see in the pictures, the fine print below the “core” memory switch array reads “PATENT PENDING.”   The brains of the computer being adapted from an existing design, the patent, D210728, claims only the “Ornamental design for the data entry keyboard console.”

So go download this excellent book and make your own wonderful paper clip computer. Link: Archive.org via Friends Of DigiComp

    

Over at 50 Watts, Will Schofield has showcased a beautiful collection of vintage Dutch safety posters.

Head over and check them all out.

Hat tip to Chris Gammell of The Amp Hour (via Reddit).

    

President Obama tries out the WaterColorBot. Photo credit: State Observer

• Sylvia Todd, Science Star, Tinkers With the Idea of Growing Up The New York Times
• A Presidential Pat for Young Scientists The New York Times
• Young Science Minds Impress at White House (video) The Rachel Maddow Show
• Auburn girl invited to White House science fair (video) News10 Sacramento
• President Obama to Host White House Science Fair White House Press Release
• President Obama Tours the 2013 White House Science Fair (video) White House YouTube Channel
• Live from the White House Science Fair with LeVar Burton and Bill Nye (video) White House YouTube Channel
• Meet Super Awesome Sylvia and her Watercolor Bot (video) White House Twitter Feed
• Tween girl gets Internet famous for being really, really good at science Salon
• Auburn 11-year-old takes project to White House Auburn Journal
• Fremont student’s science project brings her White House honors San Jose Mercury News
• Sylvia Todd, 11, the ‘maker’ behind ‘Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show’ making her mark New York Daily News
• 11-Year-Old Web Series Star Inspiring Girls in the Name of Science (video) ABC news

Congratulations to Sylvia on her participation in this fantastic event! We’ll add to this list as we find more articles and links.