Wild computing devices from the late 1800s and early 1900s

The manual photo exposure calculator was still around less than 20 years ago, on the better flash units. After setting your film speed, the dial would recommend the correct f stop for a specific distance.
Hmmm... wonder how many readers know what "f stop" and film speed mean?

that the US submarine flotilla was the only one in WWII, where all of them, in a certain class, were air conditioned. It only came out in 1984 that this was because of one of the greatest analogue computers for calculating attack vectors was on board.

They didn't want humidity to get to all the gears, pulleys, cams, and solenoids running the huge computational machine under the operational control room area. Even more amazing was that this was established in the mid thirties, if I remember my history correctly. Seems like the Americans learned from WWI, and the effective German offensive that resulted then and again in WWII. This really pulled the plug out from under the Japanese logistics in the Pacific!

is a 400~ 90Volt supply being split via rotary transformer into four phases, which drove the syncro recievers which deliver their angular data to the gears, cams and dials which do the actual computing. The rotating transformer primary (syncro transmitter) was mechanically coupled to either the range dial or the bearing dial. I "dialed in" the info by hand using the target cursor controls on my ancient QHB1a sonar stack. (in the case of my sonar)The ship's gyrocompass also drove the heading the same way. All other automatic inputs worked the same way. Since the control signals (data) were in the form of continuous 400~ sine waves in varying relative phases, it qualifies a an analog computer.