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 When first built the 2.4m x 5m computer was state-of-the-art, although it was superseded by transistor-based systems.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."

Comments

Re:Vaccum Tubes?

[MrKaos]

Where are they going to get vaccum tubes or other antiquated apparatuses from? How much will they cost?

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.

Shutting down older hardware... bad idea.

[marciot]

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.

Re:UK's oldest computer?

[TobascoKid]

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.

You are entirely correct

[Kupfernigk]

The original US tube-based computer (I forget the acronym) had about 5000 tubes, each of which had a MTTF of around 2-3000 hours. Many people thought that it would break down too often to be of any use. But the designers had realised that what kills tubes is turnon (when the filament carries more current because it is low resistance) causing filament damage and thermal shock damage to the envelope. If the tubes were warmed up slowly and then left on all the time, there would be an infant mortality phase but then the machine would get more reliable with time as the tubes got into the depths of the bathtub life curve.

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?