At one time a scientist or engineer trying to solve a tough problem with electronic computation had the choice of an analog computer, a digital computer, or both together in a hybrid configuration.

We often think of analog computing as a relic of the past, room-sized monstrosities filled with vacuum tubes doing their best to calculate Monte Carlo simulations or orbital velocities. Analog isn’t ...

Today it seems that everything electronic is digital—a reasonable assumption considering it’s hard to find a turnable knob anywhere and values are displayed in digits everywhere. The underlying ...