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All of that gear pr0n got me thinking about ridiculous mechanical gadgets, and what better than a mechanical linkage that can square a complex number? It's probably not as useful as the Peaucellier's Cell or Watt's Linkage, and I don't think it is possible to build, however I really like this somewhat extreme example of translating mathematical operations into mechanical computers. In the above calculator, the x-axis represents the real portion of the number, and the y-axis represents the imaginary portion. To make the 'calculator' work, you drag the green dot to the location of the number you want to square, and the location of the red dot tells you the answer.
You can try it out for yourself on Dori Elder's thesis site from 1999!
I have used GeoGebra to model linkages and found that it works very well - although the linkages I modeled were not as complex as that shown in the picture.
www.geogebra.com
I used it to model most of the linkages in the book "How Round is Your Circle" when I was reading it (mostly sitting in restaurants eating dinner with the book and an Asus EEE PC).
http://www.amazon.com/How-Round-Your-Circle-Engineering/dp/069113118X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251847740&sr=8-1
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Cool stuff! The link to geogebra doesn't seem to work, do you think the site is misspelled?
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Try this link for geogebra http://www.geogebra.org/
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Thanks for the link, Chris!
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