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UK's Oldest Computer To Be "Rebooted"
Smivs writes with this interesting piece of computer history, excerpted from the BBC: "Britain's oldest original computer, the Harwell, is being sent to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley where it is to be restored to working order.
The computer, which was designed in 1949, was built and used by staff at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire. It first ran in 1951 and was designed to perform mathematical calculations. It lasted until 1973.
When first built the 2.4m x 5m computer was state-of-the-art, although it was superseded by transistor-based systems.
The restoration project is expected to take a year. Although not the first computer built in the UK, the Harwell had one of the longest service lives.
Built by a team of three people, the device was capable of doing the work of six to ten people and ran for seven years until the establishment obtained their first commercial computer. 'We didn't think we were doing anything pioneering at the time,' said Dick Barnes, who helped build the original Harwell computer."
I think many vacuum tubes are being manufactured in Russia right now, I know this from buying guitar amplifier tubes so I suspect that is where they will be sourced.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I've found that for older hardware that is running fine 24x7, the worst thing is to shut it down. It invariably fails to start up again.
The Harwell is still in one piece, the Colossus no longer exists (the Colossus at Bletchly is a replica). Also, the Harwell is a stored program computer (like all modern computers), Colossus isn't.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
It seems to be predated in the UK by at least ENIAC, EDSAC and Baby, though not by a long time.
I can't find anything written about it that implies anything particularly special about it that would allow it to be "first" in a given area.
There are still plently of places in the UK that make these, admittedly most of the ones i know are hand-made for guitar amplifiers but they most certainly are made in the UK.
Pedant note: although "all the time" or "always on" have more letters than "24x7", they are quicker to say and more meaningful. Why do we have this horrible cypher?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Who modded this offtopic? Stonehenge is seriously claimed by some to be the UK's oldest computer.
It was built in 1951 and used for teaching until 1973, and then donated to a museum, it is the earliest surviving British computer
All the earlier ones (Colossus, Manchester M1 etc.. ) were destroyed, dismantled, or lost, just like their American counterparts (ENIAC etc ..)
The earlier ones you can see in museums are all only parts, or reconstructions, this is a complete and when restored potentially working computer
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
In the latter half of the '60s I had the good fortune to be able to use the most super-duper supercomputer of the time, the CDC 6600. For those who may not remember, the 6600 was one of the creations of the genius mind of Seymour Cray while he worked for Control Data Corp. I was going to write a tome about the machine, but I find the Wikipedia description (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600) is actually very good.
Suffice it to say that with a max of 1.3million characters main memory, and a 10MHz clock frequency, it was the biggest, fastest computer on the block in its day. The computations I was doing for my thesis at the time went from 8 hours per point (CDC 1604) to 1 hour per point. That was a really significant boost.
However, even back in the '90s, desktop PC hardware had improved (in capability and price) such that even a typical PC system would have a lot more power and capability than the 6600. Viva la difference!