Have you ever seen RF electronics before? They create features by changing the shape of the signal path on the PCB. It what some people call RF Voodoo because the type of stuff we are dealing with is all written in a book of black arts somewhere. Even the guy in that video does not know how to explain it real well and he is an electrical engineer.

EDIT: Another subject that I cant get out of my head along with what you posted OP is nomograms. Check out this video about one, and if this pic makes your head hurt just wait until you get into the rabbit hole of computational devices before computer chips took over the job.