Make:

On my homeworld, we use the term 'abacus'.

I would be interested, but your goals are too lofty.

1. advanced circuitry with programmable capabilities
2. an electronic readout display
3. power supply

You won't be able to make a power supply without mining for magnetic materials. If you can get magnets, then we can start talking.

You could make a calculator out of mechanical motion, but then you have to ask this: What would you even use a calculator for? Balancing your livestock dividends? Advanced physics? In my humble opinion, A calculator to someone in the wilderness is pretty useless. I might focus on a light bulb before going to something like this.

Perhaps something more along the lines of a difference engine?

@ Odin84gk

It's *Ärt*, dammit. Don't be difficült.

"I am looking for collaborators on a project that questions whether a calculator can be made from just the materials existing in a wilderness situation by one person."

An "artist" is asking for technical help. He is requesting something that is borderline impossible. Even a simple light bulb would be a magnificent triumph, and I would encourage him to explore that avenue first.

Can we start with "fÿre", or an individually mediated activation of a complex natural schema involving a filling of negative space with light, within an environment in which the viewer has little to no pre-existing self-aware experience, by way of rubbing two sticks together?

Yes, that was @kaden. Nice umlauts.

@petmar

Mission Statement: U R doing it right.

When's ur MOMA show open?

You could EASILY make an Abacus or a slide-rule with indigenous materials.

And it would be very artsy if you used hand-polished wood and shells
or something like that for the indicators.

For something more difficult, but more capable, look into
_The Tinkertoy Computer_ You'll find a great deal of inspiration
looking into that.

Maybe a 2-story tall wooden calculator that click-clacks its
way to an answer would be more your style.

ok super sorry the project is actually the stone age electronic calculator so for all you abacus fans sorry for the let down. 2nd the calculator is being made in a hunting and gathering situation, this means nomadic. Which also means not super large calculators that would end up killing our caveman when he was tracking caribou.

"An "artist" is asking for technical help. He is requesting something that is borderline impossible."

yes guilty as charged. if it wasn't borderline it wouldn't be any fun would it? We are just talking about making the manual. Which can't be so big that it can't be transportable but that is alot of room o play with and there really isn't any time limit on the construction process just as long as the participant lives longer than the time it takes to build the calculator.

Perhaps something more along the lines of a difference engine?

sorry a what?

You know about Google, right?

Cameron said:
> ok super sorry the project is actually the stone age electronic
> calculator so for all you abacus fans sorry for the let down.
>
> Perhaps something more along the lines of a difference engine?

1) How do you consider a difference engine an "electronic calulator"?

2) If you're OK with a defference engine (Do you know what that is?),
why not a slide-rule? They are in effect the same thing.
AND, any caveperson could build a slide-rule and carry it around
with no problem at all. If fact, you could put half of it on
each of two bows and not cause any extra effort for the hunters.

3) Of what use would a calculator be to a caveperson?
(I know, it's ART, so you don't need to answer that. I'm just curious
about where you're coming from and going to.)

alankilian

1) How do you consider a difference engine an "electronic calulator"?

I) don't and didn't just checked it out on google thnx kaden. You guys should check that site out it is crazy you can find anything.

2) The reason i am using an electronic calculator because it is the foundation for a computer culture. electronic display, circuits, manual switches. You should check out this page it deals with it in greater depth. http://www.stonecalculate.com/tiki-index.php?page=Why

3) navagational... but that is besides the point. The idea is that this object has not just one purpose opens up many of which i find new ones everyday. Once he or she knew how to create an electronic calculator what would he or she make with the technology. But it is also what exactly is all this technology worth if it isn't sustainable or doesn't provide us a better way of life. But this is based on anarco-primitivist theroy which don't nessesary beleive in wholly but maybe more than most.

And just because i am an artist does not mean i am technologically illiterate two months ago i built the first ever generator to produce and store electricity during sexual intercoarse.

I guess I don't get it anymore.

I looked up Anarcho-primitivism and it seems like brain wanking to me.
I mean, just to take one example: Do you really think a civilization without
antibiotics would be an improvement over our current one?

Have fun.

kaden

thnx super much a great resource. I have found the community that made the poster and they are totally on board. Great find!

alan kilian

you - "Do you really think a civilization without
antibiotics would be an improvement over our current one?"

Don't know. I know the arguments though do you?
me -"which don't nessesary beleive in wholly but maybe more than most"

alan you misunderstood what I was saying again this must be my fault. I appologize. In both of your last postings all that was proven is that we don't diagree.

Alan wrote:
> Of what use would a calculator be to a caveperson?

Camron replied:
>navagational.

Camron,
How does an electronic calculator help a primitive society navigate
any better than a simple slide rule?

It sounds like you've already come to the conclusion that you
want the solution to involve an electronic calculator, and that
any suggestions like building an utterly trivial slide rule won't
be adequate.

If you can explain why a sliderule is inadequate for primitive
navigation, maybe this will be less dogmatic.

As far as energy goes... You could use lemons to create a small electrical charge (at least enough to turn on an LED)... If you have a gallon of lemon juice you could store a bit of charge in a Lydon (sp?) jar (aka a primitive capacitor).

Once you have the charge on a capacitor, you could create a magnet using a coil of wire and some metal.

Hmm... So now where are you getting the metal?

If you can get me some metal (copper is great, but I will take anything), I may get you to the point where you can make your own generator.

Amazing! Odin84gk this is the best solution I have ever heard in terms of this project. this is exactly the type of innovation that I am talking about. Most people know that you can get electricity from fruit but very little of us would have combined the two ideas to create a strong plausibe solution to this task.

I often get soooo many peole saying it can't be done because you have to have this before you can get this. In this situation where are you going to get a magnet. Brilliant example. Copper is easy I know how to smelt and find. Together we just figured out how to create electricity of the land!

Is there a way to contact you off the board?

What you really need is to start out with concise documentation of how to make *everything*, then just cross off all the bits that don't relate to calculators.

@cameronmacleod - Do you know what a Leyden jar is? (I'm pretty sure Odin84gk was being sarcastic) you would need metal just to make the jar, not to mention try making a leyden jar see how long it will sustain a current.

Resistors are the easiest part of this equation because they could easily be made of graphite however knowing the value would be up in the air. Then we have the semiconductor for diodes and such not to mention a display or transistors for binary logic, or we could go with tubes if you can make a vacuum (many options here but each one only marginally easier than the other)

Did it ever occur to you why in fact it took us so long to get up to the calculator, aka a primitive computer (make note that not all that long ago a computer no better than today's common pocket calc took up rooms of space)

The concept of using a calculator for navigation is bunk as well, primitive man marked trees, the ground and used his own memory to find his way about... far easier than using many lifetimes to make a calculator that would only be marginally useful as a navigation device. Far less useful than say... a compass?

> Far less useful than say... a compass?

Or a sliderule.

But the point of the art project is to think about how a primitive
society would build an electronic calculator not if it would be
useful.

Remember to include instructions for shifting to an agrarian society, because all your hunters and gatherers are gonna be busy hunting and gathering stuff other than food.

One of the great things about engineers (or people with this mindset) is that we always try to think of why it won't work. This serves us very well because it keeps us from wasting hundreds of hours on a meaningless project. On the other hand, it can blind us from projects that will never be complete, but will show us a lot. I don't believe he can make a "stone age calculator", but I am interested in how I could make a light with only the most basic materials available. Maybe then someone will take the initiative to create another step in the process.

Oh, and on another note: A electrostatic generator (or friction machine) would work a lot better than lemons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_generator). And if you can make copper wire, then we can make copper sheets. Now we just need to know how to make some glass, and we can make a very good electrostatic generator (aka Van de Graaff generator) and a battery pack (aka Leiden jars)

So ya need a melting oven... hole in the ground with a brick lid, lotsa charcoal and a big-ass bellows. Clean sand and wood ash will turn into glass, and you can sand cast your containers. Make your crucible out of of graphite (charcoal powder and clay, hand formed and fired in your hot hole-in-the-ground).

Odin84gk I totally think this is a great point of view well put and I don't know if the manual will actually be able to be made either but I am totally interested in trying.
Kaden I am glad you are participating also I made a mindmap to help work flow what do you think?
http://www.stonecalculate.com/mind42.html

With glass comes nixie tubes and and just regular electric tube transistors... that could be an option.

I'm not sure how good stone age made silicon would work for a full on microprocessor mind you...

Right.. so now we need a vacuum pump.

This gig is getting better by the minute

> You wrote:
>
> I am looking for collaborators on a project that questions whether
> a calculator can be made from just the materials existing in a
> wilderness situation by one person.

I'm lost.

You're trying to build an electronic calculator with a stone-age
civilization, and you're using a vacuum pump? That's not stone-age
civilization material.

It sounds like you're saying you want to take a stone-age civilization,
give it all the advananced technology to build an electronic
calculator, and then have them build an electronic calulator.

That's pretty interesting.

Agreed: The huge range of prerequisite tech skills inherent in the project is a subject that needs to be addressed. Frankly, if I were at a hunter/gatherer level of technology and was presented with a manual that detailed that entire requisite range of lore, you'd have a hard time convincing me that the most appropriate usage of said lore was building something to replace my already perfectly functional abacus.

Yeah, yeah... it's *Ärt*.