Watched a video by Technology Connections about old pinball machines and... actually lost interest by the end of a video of his for once.

That electromechanical stuff reminds me of digital logic. It *is* digital logic. Just done with switches, relays and cams. Early electronic computers worked just like pinball machines. I saw a working replica of an electromechanical computer at Bletchley Park and it was essentially the same thing.

Pinball machines are hilariously complex, but so are computer chips. Electricity can't count, wait its turn or make decisions, so it takes a lot of trickery to convince it to do that. The chips do it better though, and pack a lot more complexity into a much smaller space.

Pinball machines are good for visuals, but you can learn exactly the same concepts if you take a computer engineering course.

He began the video by showing off a more modern pinball machine with a computer in it. It was frankly more stimulating for the player than the older machine. There's a ton of stuff, such as strobing lights, voice effects and animated displays, that the older machines simply couldn't pull off. Little is lost from the newer machines by putting in a computer, and much is gained.

He sounded disappointed as he said "it's a computer". Again, there isn't much to show there. Not unless the audience knows programming and electronics, that is. There's plenty to explore if you reverse engineer those chips and probe at them with an oscilloscope. But that doesn't make for a good video for general audiences.