I believe one of the earliest applications incorporating this line of thought was MONIAC, the Monetary National Income Analogue Computer, which used water levels to model the economy [0]. There's a short youtube documentary on its history and operation. [1]
Analog computers are from the 19th century; they were used to decompose signals using the Fourier transform, since it's easy(ish) to get a bunch of different frequency oscillators. They used them for tides and differential equations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAZavOcEnLg&ab_channel=Reser...
https://youtu.be/rAZavOcEnLg?t=101 (shows operation of MONIAC)