A Marble Binary-adder
June 22nd, 2007 | Filed under Technology.Once again proving that there’s nothing magical about the insides of a computer, this website shows a binary marble adding machine in action. It’s a six-bit binary adder which uses a system of rockers and marbles to add numbers together. The marbles fall down channels onto rockers which then dump their marbles onto the rockers below, performing simple binary addition. And to all the techies reading this, yes he rigs it up to do 31+1 causing a fun cascade effect as the carry “bit” walks through the machine 
If you’ve never really understood how binary works, have a watch of his included YouTube video, it might make things a bit more clear.
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That’s really neat. I also love the lego links from that page with card readers and other machines that people have built.
I think that people forget that their shiny PCs are merely lots of these clunky (tiny) switches all bolted together..!
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arron