Part 3/10:
The quest to predict tides, a significant problem for sailors and coastal dwellers for centuries, led to innovative advancements in analog computing. Historically, the need to understand tidal shifts was critical to navigation, with events like Napoleon’s infamous Red Sea crossing fraught with danger due to poor tide calculations. In the late 18th century, mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace developed complex differential equations around tidal flow, but without analytical solutions, these findings were largely theoretical.