ed.goforth writes:
"Gears of war: When mechanical analog computers ruled the waves over at Ars is a quick recap of the history of naval targeting & fire control systems and the transition from analog to digital. In short, you'll never believe just how good those old designs were, and how much work it's taken to make GPS-based guidance be as accurate."
(Score: 5, Informative) by Doogman on Tuesday March 18 2014, @02:11PM
There's quite a bit of old armed services training videos on Youtube. Despite their age, they are usually well done and still interesting.
Here's a batch about the mechanical computers mentioned in the article:
https://www.youtube.com/user/navyreviewer/search?q uery=mechanical+computer [youtube.com]