The World's Oldest Original Digital Computer Springs Back Into Action At TNMOC 65
New submitter prpplague writes "After a three-year restoration project at The National Museum of Computing, the Harwell Dekatron (aka WITCH) computer will rebooted on 20 November 2012 to become the world's oldest original working digital computer. Now in its seventh decade and in its fifth home, the computer with its flashing lights and clattering printers and readers provides an awe-inspiring display for visiting school groups and the general public keen to learn about our rich computer heritage."
Bletchley Park, amazing place. (Score:4, Informative)
I highly recommend visiting bletchley park. You won't be disappointed.
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Re:Not a digital computer (Score:5, Informative)
With 828 dekaton counter tubes I reckon it's not a digital computer (2 base) but a decimal computer (10 base).
There are 10 kinds of people who understand binary...
It is still a digital computer (as opposed to an analogue computer), as were other non-binary false starts like the Setun [wikipedia.org] which used balanced ternary.
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No, there are 3 types of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.
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No, there are 3 types of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.
Or, there are 1T types of people in the world. Those who understand balanced ternary [wikipedia.org] and those who don't.
or: There are 110 types of people in the world. Those who understand negabinary [wikipedia.org] and those who don't.
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I was going to post an amusing personal coincidence from wikipedia: "the machine became operational in April 1951. It was handed over to the computing group in May 1952."
It's exactly one year older than me; I was born in April 1952. Whoever did the summary isn't very good at math, I'm not 70 years old. This thing was operational 61 years ago. Most of you guys grew up with computers, Computers grew up with me. [kuro5hin.org]
It is still a digital computer (as opposed to an analogue computer), as were other non-binary false
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Re:Not a digital computer (Score:5, Informative)
And yet even more people who have problems with English.
Digital, as opposed to analogue, refers to the data being in discrete chunks.
You may be correct in it being a decimal computer, as opposed to a binary computer, but it is still a digital computer.
However the Dekatron valves could be made in effective binary mode (9 anodes to 1 pin) so it could still be a binary computer.
Re:Not a digital computer (Score:5, Informative)
And yet even more people who have problems with English. Digital, as opposed to analogue, refers to the data being in discrete chunks. You may be correct in it being a decimal computer, as opposed to a binary computer, but it is still a digital computer. However the Dekatron valves could be made in effective binary mode (9 anodes to 1 pin) so it could still be a binary computer.
It was most definitely a decimal computer [wikipedia.org].
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However the Dekatron valves could be made in effective binary mode (9 anodes to 1 pin) so it could still be a binary computer.
That wasn't for binary, it was for allowing less complicated tubes if they were only going to be used as divide-by-10. Instead of drawing out all 10 cathodes, cathode 0 has it's own pin, and 1-9 are on a common pin... as you only need to measure / know when cathode 0 goes high again (signifying 10 pulses have occurred).
If they only needed binary it would be a flip flop instead (either tube, for 'high' speed, sometimes glow lamps in slower things)
but yeah, absolutely digital.
Re:Not a digital computer (Score:5, Informative)
You do know that the term "digital" comes from "finger" so the origin is closer to base 10 than 2. The modern definition is something quantified by numbers rather than continuous properties. A digital encoding of 0.5 volts as the number 0.5.
This does lead on to the adage that "end the end, everything is analogue" which makes more sense if you have ever used a high-frequency storage oscilloscope.
Re:Not a digital computer (Score:5, Informative)
Car analogy (Score:3)
That's like saying "this car does not run on petrol, it has 6 wheels".
THAT IS THE ONE ANDY GROVE DESIGNED !! (Score:1)
Around the time when dinosaurs ruled the planet !!
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Yes, the world is every bit as simple as you were lead to believe in grade school. Computers were created just as they are now in 1943, and no potential or intended uses for them have altered their development in any way.
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It's unlikely anyone has ever told you that computers were invented for space travel.
What they probably told you is you enjoy technological advances spurred by the space program, evidenced by things you take for granted in your everyday life, such as your computer and mobile phone. And that's accurate in that the space program helped drastically advance the miniaturization of electronics and improvements in material sciences, among countless other things.
"will rebooted": it is self-aware! (Score:2)
If this computer can decide to reboot itself, it must have now reached self-awareness!
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So I guess the NT Kernel is self-aware. Same goes for Linux, I presume.
Cue Apple marketing OS X crashes as it being self-aware and magically resetting itself to a safe state.
But why? (Score:2)
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Slashdot, please stop giving mod points to non-nerds! Facebook is NOT a nerd site, and trashing it isn't trolling. The GP is the fucking troll and can't possibly be a nerd. "Restoring computing machinery for a show in a museum is one thing, making it working again is a real waste of resources!" should have been modded to oblivion. It's incredibly inflammatory to we nerds, unlike "facebook is a waste of resources." That's only inflammatory to teenagers and middle aged mothers. Sheesh...
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"But Why?"
Why not?
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making it working again is a real waste of resources!
Do you realize how many programmers spend every day designing games for Facebook, new fart apps for iOS, and expansions for WoW?
Nice... (Score:3, Funny)
...But does it run Linux?
That's a real computer (Score:2, Funny)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
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828 flashing Dekatron valves (Score:4, Informative)
Dekatron valves [wikipedia.org] are an example of a solution to the problem of making storage registers before integrated circuits made them essentially free. Making reliable working memory was one of the biggest problems faced by the early computer hardware designers, and Dekatron valves (tubes) were one of the more creative solutions. Of course, the reliability of solid-state electronics made them a technological backwater, but that makes them no less interesting -- it's fun to speculate on how things would have worked out if cold-cathode valves remained the dominant storage technology.
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it's fun to speculate on how things would have worked out if cold-cathode valves remained the dominant storage technology
Well, for one thing, you probably wouldn't be reading this site. Just downloading this webpage takes more resources than a lot of those early computers had, never mind rendering it. Valve-based systems don't scale it a way even remotely close to Moore's Law, and their lack of reliability meant that making the machine with too many of them just meant shorter mean time between failure and more time and expense spent on maintenance. The Internet as we think of it today would probably never have existed, much l
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Round about the time the WITCH was current, it looked like transistor-based systems wouldn't scale either. It's all down to which way you apply technology.
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Tube logic was inefficient, and had reliability issues due to short life, but they were capable of high (MHz) switching speeds. Of course the size of things raises problems, and you have to run it a lot slower than any given gate could run, I suppose. Line driving issues, stray capacitance in the miles of wiring and whatnot, will kill your sharp edges and miss pulses.
Cold cathode, however, was slow as fuck. A couple kHz, maybe, for neon; somewhat faster for argon. Hydrogen was the fastest IIRC ( the small s
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Well, for one thing, you probably wouldn't be reading this site
You wouldn't be reading this site without integrated circuits. When I was in the USAF in 1972 I got to see the insides of a 1972 computer that ran a C-5A flight simulator. Rooms full of bookshelves, except instead of books the shelves held printed circuit boards. That was a computer in 1972, and it was probably far less powerful than an Apple IIe.
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Copypasta from TFA:
Power Consumption: 1.5kW
Size 2m high x 6m wide x 1m deep
Weight: 2.5 tonnes
Number of Dekaton counter tubes: 828
Number of other valves: 131
Number of relays: 480
Number of contacts or relay switches: 7073
Number of high speed relays: 26
Number of lamps: 199
Number of switches: 18
It uses about the same power as the space heater in my living room which does dim the lights across the apartment. I'd expect a museum to have slightly better power than the century-home I live in although I may be mista
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Neato. I'd have (rather uneducated-ly) guessed at least an order of magnitude more power consumption.
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The really interesting part is that high-end (and I mean high-end - multiple GPUs for instance) systems still use about that much power.
Correction (Score:2)
It's the oldest working digital computer.
This is what you get when submitters copy-and-paste everything.
New submitter prpplague writes
Can we get rid of this standard introduction? It's almost never true.
Pity it was not ready for 31 October (Score:2)
With a name like that an announcement on Halloween would have been fun.
The second oldest digital computer is on the bend. (Score:4, Funny)
Don't forget the ABC... (Score:1)
Don't forget the Zuse Z3... (Score:2)
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...which was destroyed in an Allied bomb raid in 1943. Yes, a duplicate was built in the 1960s which is still operational today, but it doesn't stop the WITCH from becoming the oldest *original* still-operating computer in existence.
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It would be remiss to ignore the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (1942).
I wouldn't call a calculating machine that couldn't be programmed a "computer." Yes, it was a forerunner to computers, and technical developments for it were used in computers, but I wouldn't call a non-programmable device a computer.
Mayan Predictions (Score:2)
worth seeing (Score:1)
Rebooted? (Score:2)
I can only guess that the author of the article thinks that "rebooted" means "plugged in and turned on". When I first saw the title I thought it meant that it had been running for years and was to undergo a rare re-start.
Thankfully it wasn't invented in Birmingham. (Score:2)
Lets see how long this one takes.
oldest original digital computer? (Score:1)
You mean there is a newer original digital computer?
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there are replicas of older digital computers such as the Colossus(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer), but they are not the original. The Harwell Computer is all of the original equipment....
Imagine (Score:2)
... a Beowulf cluster ...