Researcher Resurrects the First Computer

aleph60 writes "A German researcher is about to resurrect the first fully electronic general-purpose stored-program computer, the Manchester Mark 1 (1948). The functional replica will run the source code of an original program from 1952 by Christopher Strachey, whose sole purpose was generating love letters; it is historically interesting as one of the first examples of a text-generating program. The installation will be shown at an art exhibition in Germany at the end of April." Here is researcher David Link's Manchester Mark I emulator home, which generates a new love poem on each page load. When the Mark I had been used to search for new Mersenne primes in 1949, a press account coined the phrase "electronic brain" to characterize it.

Comments

Obligatory

[Ranzear]

Soo.. What could you get out of a beowulf cluster of these?

Re:Random Numbers on the Manchester Mark 1?

[geekoid]

Actually I haven't; however:

A) We are clearly discussing the macro world, not the quantum world.

B) While we know a lot more about quantum behaviors and properties then we did even a decade ago, there is a lot we d not know. WHile behaviors seem like that can't be predicted, it could be we don't know enough yet to be aware of other 'forces' at play. Even if they are truly random, you point is irrelevant in the context of this article.

C) Your statement will become relevant the moment we have practical quantum computers. Yes we have them, no they are not practical.

Or is the computer they recreated a common household quantum computer?

D) Bad me for not clarifying that while they are pseudo random, they are also random enough. Meaning it would be extremely difficult to get this factors. The smart people that read my post understand that was implied with the coin toss example; however not every one is smart.