Odum’s 1960s hardware kits
Father of ecology, H.T.Odum designed circuits and build electronics to simulate ecosystems... I can’t find any photos of the actual hardware (computational device he would call it, because there were no computers), which consisted of battery, wire, resistors and capacitors “scaled to a particular ecosystem by quantitatively adjusting the sizes of the electrical components used. Thus, the Silver Springs model was scaled with 13.9 mA/g/m2/year of carbon flow (Odum, 1960a). Milliammeters and voltmeters were used to make measurements of flows and storages at various locations on the network for examining simulations.” Odum later moved to computer simulations and designed a symbolic, energy modeling circuit language, which are also interesting, but I would really like to see the original hardware simulations, which are mini-computers & ecosystems at the same time, and I would like to design one :-) "He then explored this idea by constructing and simulating an electrical circuit of the Silver Springs ecosystem in which ... resistances are grouped at locations of the producing and consuming populations. Batteries supply the concentrated energy representing the sun and the energy imported as organic matter from the outside. The various branching flows of food energy to consumers are presented with branching electrical wires. Variable resistances and switches permit the observer to set up various special situations and combinations. (Odum, 1960,p.5)
