Nicholas Bodley sent me to www.maritime.org for information about the MK.1 mechanical computer that he used as a Navy Fire Control Technician during the Korean War. Just the schematic of its operation is a dizzying flowchart.
A description of the mechanical components of this computer system can be found in the manual Basic Fire Control Mechanisms (62.7MB). It is an excellent description of the use gears, cams and linkages for computation.
MK 1 Mechanical Computer
Four-bar function generator
Select this link, Four-bar linkages, for a Geogebra book that illustrates linkages ranging from a lever to a crank-rocker that open a door. This includes the construction of a four-bar linkage that coordinates the open and closed positions with specific input crank angles, called a four-bar function generator. The iPad application, MechGen FG, computes four-bar function generators for five coordinated values of the input and output cranks.
Profs. Carl Nelson and Anurag Purwar organized a Summer School on Kinematic Theory at the University at Buffalo, New York as part of the 2014 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences. Please select this link to get access to all of the talks: Kinematics Summer School.
Select this link for a YouTube playlist of the videos of each presentation.
My lecture on the synthesis of six-bar and eight-bar linkages is the third item on the playlist.
You can access a pdf of my talk at the link: Synthesis of Planar Six-bar and Eight-bar Linkages.
Among these is a nice presentation by Anurag Purwar on Quaternions and Clifford Algebras.
Introduction to Linkages
Please select this link to open the Geogebra Book containing constructions of a number of interesting linkages. This is an introduction to the useful movement available with articulated systems.