These machines were invented in Soviet union ca. 1930 and were in mass production until 1980, and only went into total disuse and were scrapped when perestroika began and brought smuggled used IBM XTs along with it. For many tasks, with the level of Soviet per hour tech workers pay and level of technology, they were more efficient than all Soviet pre-microprocessor digital computers and some early microprocessor-based ones. All thermal and mechanical simulations for construction engineering purposes were successfully ran on them.<p>As for the economic tasks i don't know, i don't think it could work the the soviet economy - where imbalances weren't necessarily cancelling themselves and were frequently kept with a purpose, or just stayed because there was no force motivated to fix. But logically, market economy resembles connected volumes with liquid of various level difference and hydraulic resistance and can be described with same equations, so in the West it probably worked very well.