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Old Computers Resurrected As Instruments At Bletchley Park
arcticstoat writes with a snippet from bit-tech.com; musician Matthew Applegate "plans on assembling a virtual orchestra of 20 retired relics of computing at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. The choice of venue will even allow Applegate to feature the infamous Colossus Mark 2 computer in the event, which was used for code-breaking in World War II and was recently reconstructed at Bletchley Park in 2007. ... A wide selection of computing fossils be used in Applegate's final musical presentation, which is called 'Obsolete?' This includes the Elliot 803 (a 1960s machine with 4KB of memory), the aforementioned Colossus Mark 2, a Bunsviga adding machine (pictured) and a punch card machine. As well as this, there are also some machines that will look nostalgically familiar to kids who grew up with the home computer generation, including a BBC Micro, an Atari 800XL, a Dragon 32 and an Amstrad CPC464." The article's list of the members of this "orchestra" makes an interesting checklist of computer hardware history.
Why is the Colossus "infamous"? It's famous, and it's use saved thousands of lives and shortened the war.
Brett
bbc report with sound and video
open in a tab then buy tickets !!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7895853.stm
tickets links -
March 20th, 2009 http://www.etickets.to/buy/?e=2285
March 21th, 2009 http://www.etickets.to/buy/?e=2373
regards
John Jones
http://www.johnjones.me.uk
Poor Forbin! He will be locked up alnight with that sex female computer scientist.
Parent is a reference to Colossus: The Forbin Project.
You young whippersnappers that modded the parent off-topic can get off of my lawn now.
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