In [The varieties of material existence](http://cognitivemedium.com/vme), Michael Nielsen says the following:

"It’s easy to design a programmable device which is universal for electrostatics in any given closed region of space. You need two abilities: (1) the ability to create arbitrary charge densities within the region; and (2) a set of electrodes bounding the space, to which can be applied arbitrary potentials. Standard results about boundary-value problems then imply that both: (1) the electric field is completely determined within the region; and (2) any electric field which is possible in electrostatics may be created in this way. It should, in fact, be relatively easy to build a crude prototype for such a system, although of course there will be limits on the achievable charge densities and potentials. (**I wouldn’t be surprised if this was routine, and I simply don’t know the name of this type of device**.)".

Does this device exist? What's it's name?