Binary marble adding machine

Wow.  This is probably old news, but I just came across it.  It absolutely amazes me what people can do.  This is a binary adder machine made entirely out of wood with marbles representing the bits!  It's incredibly elegant in its simplicity.  Drop the marbles in the top, and the rockers either drop the ball or shift it to the next position.  You could keep adding columns to represent the next bit and count as high as was practically possible.

What amazes me the most, is how people can recreate technology in low-tech ways.  It really makes you think about what was possible before the 20th century.  When you look at the drawings of da Vinci and early work of Babbage, Pascal, and Leibniz, you see just how much progress was made before anyone even fully understood it.  That's my obsession with Steampunk too.  Using wood, brass, steam, and mechanical apparatus, we can reproduce many components of modern technology.

Of course, some of it is mostly possible in retrospect.  We can be creative and go "low-tech," but what would have happened if people had better understood the implications back in the 19th century?  It's fascinating to speculate.

Creations like this make me appreciate what we are capable of, and make me wonder what under-appreciated invention or discovery will go largely unnoticed until 50-100 years from now.  Will people then wonder how we could have been so dumb to miss the significance?

Source: Binary marble adding machine