Researchers have discovered how to design materials that necessarily have a point or line where the material doesn't deform under stress, and that even remember how they have been poked or squeezed in ...

Long before electricity was a common household utility, humanity had been building machines to do many tasks that we’d now just strap a motor or set of batteries onto and think nothing of it.

Researchers have developed a kirigami-inspired mechanical computer that uses a complex structure of rigid, interconnected polymer cubes to store, retrieve and erase data without relying on electronic ...

North Carolina State University researchers have developed a kirigami-inspired mechanical computer that uses a complex structure of rigid, interconnected polymer cubes to store, retrieve and erase ...

In the 19th century, British mathematician Charles Babbage invented the “difference engine,” a mechanical computer that had an enormously complex arrangement of levers, ratchets and gears. Had this ...

Back in the 70’s when computers were fairly expensive and out of reach for most people, [David Hagelbarger] of Bell Laboratories designed CARDIAC: CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation. CARDIAC ...

In a nutshell: In a world where computers keep getting smaller and more compact, researchers at North Carolina State University have gone in the opposite direction. They've created a mechanical ...

The mechanical computers of yesterday may have been enormous, difficult to program, and amazingly clunky—but they sure were beautiful to watch in action. Released theatrically by Popular Science on ...

A single-celled organism that walks using 14 “legs” seems to control these legs with a mechanical computer made of fibres called microtubules. The finding might help explain how many other ...