UK's Oldest Computer To Be "Rebooted" 153
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When first built the 2.4m x 5m computer was state-of-the-art, although it was superseded by transistor-based systems.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."
obligatory Simpsons quote (Score:5, Funny)
Drivers of technology... (Score:2)
Obligatory Bill Gates misquotation (Score:2, Funny)
64 vacuum tubes ought to be enough for anyone.
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I'm more interested in having it emulated in MESS [mess.org].
One word (Score:2)
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NO ! We're not gonna f***ing do "Stonehenge"!
Re:One word (Score:5, Funny)
With apologies to john Lennon
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Who modded this offtopic? Stonehenge is seriously claimed by some to be the UK's oldest computer.
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what does it compute?
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At a bare minimum the summer solstice, but there are claims that it also computes eclipses.
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Only by people deliberately misconstruing the term ‘computer’ to be cute.
How about this: Single-celled life is, collectively, the world’s oldest computer. After all, it multiplies without external help!
...finally! (Score:4, Funny)
hindsight (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the article we had yesterday, which argued that technological growth is slowing down, was a total hogwash. Technological growth is speeding up! What is constant is our inability to recognize great technological advancement except in hindsight.
Re:hindsight (Score:4, Interesting)
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We ought to just make sure that we are always doing our best to further the fields of science and technology, and not worry about whether our growth is faster or slower than in the past.
But then how would you collect funding for your cause of choice?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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For that to be a proper comparison,. bot computers need to be on th same place on the technological curve. If the Vic was bought when it was at tyhe tope of the curve, then you ahve to compare that price to a computer that's at the top of the curve NOW.
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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
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you are correct, it conversation is only reletive to the markers.
Moores's law, for example, isn't holding up. Some people think that means technology is slowing down. Two totally different things. That's like comparing an apple to an apple farm.
Vaccum Tubes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vaccum Tubes? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Vaccum Tubes? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
That does raise the question of whether a computer built with vacuum tubes gives mp3 files a warmer sound.
Or maybe not. ;-)
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Sure, once the tubes are at operating temperature...
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The joke didn't need explaining. Trust me.
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I actually thought value_added was having a crack at the audiophiles that describe sound produced through valve amplifiers as 'warm' as opposed to semiconductor amplifiers. I can understand the use of Valve amps in musical instruments because they are seeking the third harmonic distortion [tpub.com] of the waveform produced by the musical instrument. In actuality the amplifier *is* part of the instrument.
I work really
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Secondly, it has been shown via double blind testing that virtually no one can hear distortion if it is below about 1.5%. Fact is, most speakers produce more distortion than
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From my understanding this is a factor because audio power amplifiers (domestic and musical) introduce the third harmonic distortion as the tubes are being physically vibrated
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It must be really depressing then to have the CD mastering wreck all that with over compression.
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my transient control is so practised that a mastering engineer would have to try real hard to fuck up my mixes. Even so, why take a chance, so I actually do the mastering to disc.
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That does raise the question of whether a computer built with vacuum tubes gives mp3 files a warmer sound.
Nah, they are from Russia, nothing is warm there.
Actually, the tubes give a cool sound, just be careful to don't get them clogged.
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For best results, the power cable should be gold-plated and cost $200 or more.
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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.
Re:Vaccum Tubes from Russia (Score:2)
Better watch out for trojans and backdoors in those tubes put there by the Russians, in case this computer were ever to be used against them in a war.
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In Soviet Russia, tubes vacuum you!
Obligatory? (Score:1)
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How much will they cost?
There is no greater wealth than wisdom, no greater poverty than ignorance; no greater heritage than culture and no greater support than consultation
Re:Vaccum Tubes? (Score:5, Interesting)
the thing uses dekatrons (ten cathode tube where pulse on guide electrode next to a cathode makes conduction jump to next cathode), which though not produced anymore are widely available. A computer made from them is much like a mechanical cash register with counting wheels. they are used by many hobbyists for clocks and other counting applications. no problem getting them
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I *think* that the point is that it is already mostly complete: hence ""Britain's oldest *original* computer" (emphasis added). Other older computers exist in the UK, but they are replicas or re-builds.
Shutting down older hardware... bad idea. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
You are entirely correct (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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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?
Pedant note: The term "cypher" is not a meaningful synonym for argot, cliche, neologism, colloquialism, expression, jargon, localism, newspeak, parlance, phrase, or vernacular (among others).
That's not to say slipping in other people's mud isn't forgivable. ;-)
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This was rediscovered by the US (ENIAC) in 1946 , those people at Bletchley Park discovered this and built a computer using the idea of not turning them off in 1943 ...Wartime Official secrets stopped them telling anyone ....
The hardware people who discovered this were the Post Office (Telecoms) who used tubes for switching and knew the pitfalls ...
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Because of the written part of our language.
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A joke my Dad told... (Score:5, Funny)
Okay.. I know that the premise of this joke is totally wrpng and UK scientists were computing pioneers, but it reminds me my favorite joke my father ever told me:
Q: Why didn't the British never make a computer?
A: They couldn't figure out a way to make it leak oil.
(I think the joke is incorrect... probably on both counts).
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There are all sorts of non sequiturs that fit in there:
Q: Why didn't the British ever make a computer?
A: Have you tried the food?!
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You know why they reckon Harley riders ride in threes? One to work on the bike, one to pass the tools, and one to flag down passing riders for more hammers.
(with best wishes from a Triumph rider)
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Did you know that 80% of all Harleys ever made are still on the road?
The other 20% made it home safely... :D
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1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
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Would leaky electrolytic capacitors count?
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Re:A joke my Dad told... (Score:5, Insightful)
A: They couldn't figure out a way to make it leak oil.
And that's a bad thing?
My first car was a 2-seater Triumph convertible. It suffered from electrical system problems, leaking hydraulics, and when it rained, the top would leak (even if you managed to snap all the buttons downs correctly). But was it fun! Wind through my hair, wet shoulders, the smell of hydraulic fluid dripping on my left shoe, being pulled over and cited for "overcrowding" when I had more than 3 passengers in the car ...
The cars I've owned since have all been what you'd call dependable if not "top of the line", but I can't remember a single interesting about them.
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As a practical person, I prefer my car to be efficient in its abilities to get me to places I want to go, and its ability to not be a burden on my wallet. Ill trade 'interesting' for that any day.
Re:A joke my Dad told... (Score:4, Interesting)
My mother owned a Jaguar X-type from 2002 or so. I once read a review of it (this one [automotive.com], I think) and they made exactly this point:
There was a time not long ago when Jaguars were stunningly beautiful, fantastic driving cars that were known to be fragile and unreliable. Jaguars were sexy but leaked oil. Jaguars were luxurious and emotional, but their windows often failed to go up or down. Jaguars were invigorating to drive but could leave you stranded on a cold morning.
This Jaguar, the X-Type, is the opposite of those great Jags of the past. This car trades those wonderful qualities that made Jaguars cars to lust after and has replaced them with the bland reliability that makes Toyotas cars to lust after....
Maybe we'd like it better if it leaked.
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The explains why they were reliable at that time then, doesn't it?
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Are there really people here who don't get the joke?
Yes. But don't worry: I'm getting off your lawn.
UK's oldest computer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:UK's oldest computer? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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ANd I thought it was fistion:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/ [imdb.com]
And I'm pretty sure Colossus is Russian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(comics) [wikipedia.org]
I'm done...for now.
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Original Punch Cards too? (Score:2, Interesting)
For many of the younger generations of developers who don't know anything about these machines, it would be quite something to show them how the original developers used to work. It will also show how far we have advanced.
primitive pr0n (Score:3, Interesting)
We didn't think we were doing anything pioneering at the time
Yeah, that's what the ASCII art inventors and the creators of GIF at CompuServ said.
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Or the owners of the first porn domain on the Internet!
What? (Score:2)
UK's Oldest Computer To Be "Rebooted"
Although not the first computer built in the UK
How could it be the UK's oldest computer if it wasn't the first computer built in the UK?
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Maybe the older ones are "dead"
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oldest surviving computer, perhaps ?
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
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
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> this is a complete and when restored potentially working computer
You just gave a very correct description of the one-year-old 1000-node cluster I am now using at work :(
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Because "One of UK's oldest" or "UK's second oldest" just aren't sexy enough for headlines.
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The "older" computers have all been dismantled and the ones in museums are all replicas
the Colossus MkI was upgraded to MkII
All the MkII's were deliberately destroyed, except one, and that was thrown away by the secret services (who were using it)
the Manchester M1's were all dismantled years ago.
Nobody thinks heritage is important until it is old, and these early computers did not survive being obsolete long enough to get old and thought to be worth keeping, the ENIAC was for years thought to the the worlds
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The older computer, of course, was the ABC, from which the ENIAC borrowed heavily and then patented! The patents were later found invalid, due to the ABC.
Several pieces of the ABC remain at Iowa State. Once Atanasoff (A) and Berry (B) were done with it, it was cannibalized for other projects.
Two replicas were built in the late 90's, one of which was actually run a few times.
hawk
Modern Times (Score:4, Funny)
"[...] the device was capable of doing the work of six to ten people [...]"
Interesting to see how it changes over time. Today, considering the majority of jobs, you either cut off social networking access or you'll need six to ten people to do the work of two or three.
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I know you are trying to be funny, but I was talking to some accounts about how computers ahve spead things up.
We were remember where you would wait 90+ days for a new report, now it's a day, maybe.
I mean, you would request a new report*, it would need to get approved, then several people would have to manually tabulate the date, then a typesetter would ahve to do a layout, then it would get a sample run, then approved, then supplies purchased and then it would get printed. The manually distributed to all t
computer, versus stored program computer, versus.. (Score:5, Interesting)
There's the problem of deciding what's a real computer-- do you include things that can crunch numbers, but have a hard-wired program, or have a program, but it's on a loop of paper tape, or have a program, but it's wired onto a plugboard. The Harwell machine is programmable, but the program is on a loop of paper tape, making anything other than one simple loop very problematical.
Also its data storage is in a few cold-cathode Dekatrons, which are basically overachieving neon lights. They limit the counting-up speed to about 20,000 increments per second, just barely in the electronic realm, and much slower than anything using real vacuum tubes. And it uses a lot of mechanical relays, further limiting its speed and making it a very marginal computer in any modern sense of the word.
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I don't care. Cold-cathode Dekatrons are how everything should be stored!
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WEll, I agree, they're cool looking. But to have your computing speed be limited by the de-ionization time of a gas is less than thrilling. You think a VAX-750 with ten users was slow.... :)
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Given enough tape and enough time it is a universal Turing machine, so it can emulate any computer ... slowly ....
Even ENIAC was a Turing machine and so could run anything ....it would be even slower and more cumbersome but could still run Linux!
If you read the details then you will see that they left it running unattended over Christmas and the New year once and it did a lot of calculations in that time ... not just a "simple" loop ...
Any machine that is Turing complete is a computer,
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>Even ENIAC was a Turing machine and so could run anything ....
Anything that has a conditional skip and subtract and some memory is Turing-capable.
The original ENIAC was only slightly better than this. And yes it could do "anything", for very limited values of "anything", as it only had like twenty ten-digit accumulators for memory and plug-wired-only programs.
Turing (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, it's funny how that happens when you persecute your best people.
I guess this was '49. But still. These guys are getting media attention while Turing rots in his grave.
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He's in a grave. Is he not supposed to rot?
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Live in the past.. (Score:2)
It's cheaper!
And besides, the red Chinese invented the computer 3,000 years ago.
Mathematical Calculations? No way! (Score:2)
From the summary:
Is there any computer that was designed to do anything else?
Well, yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Early data processing machines (like Hollerith card analysers) were designed to perform select and sort operations which they did using logical functions, but they did not do calculations. You wanted to know who in a brigade had a particular skill, you fed in the punched cards for the brigade, and the output stack delivered the ones whose holes coincided with the setup. Colossus was intended to do code breaking by high speed (for the time) data processing, but it did not do general purpose calculation. So yes, this is a meaningful distinction.
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computers only add.
Yes, that IS correct. Everything else is interpretation and applying the math.
No, that's wrong (Score:2)
On a related note... (Score:2, Funny)
Micro$oft recently released Harwell OS 7, which uses all of the available registers to create a waving M$ flag using the Harwell's front panel lights. Unfortunately, it has since been determined that the new OS really requires two Harwell computers wired in a parallel configuration to perform adequately. The M$ product manager for the Harwell OS stated: "The hardware requirements on the side of the box clearly state that one Harwell computer is the MINIMUM requirement, not the optimum configuration."
Lets see how this bad boy handles today's porn! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Atomic program my ass... this mother fucker was used for hardcore mother fucking porn....
Boot this bitch up and lets jack like its 1949.
Oldest? (Score:2)
How about the Difference Engine?
Yeah but watch out! (Score:2)
Soon someone will port Linux to it, as well as Doom. :)
I heard that Vacuum tubes are rare to find and that Vacuum tube computers can be rewired to use Transistors instead when Vacuum tubes cannot be found.
Happy she is being restored. (Score:2)
Awesome news. I believe this computer used to belong to Wolverhampton University, however I have seen it in storage in Birmingham for years. Glad it is going back for restoration.
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Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, 1948 (Score:2, Interesting)
The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine [wikipedia.org], aka the "Baby" Manchester Mark I, ran its first program in 1948. A replica was built in 1998 to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
It had 32 words of 32 bits each and used a Williams Tube [wikipedia.org] for memory.
Opcode list:
000 JMP S Jump to the instruction at the specified memory address (absolute unconditional jump)
100 JRP S Jump to the instruction at the specified memory address plus the number in the accumulator (relative unconditional jump)
010 LDN S
But Does It Run... (Score:2)
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Colossus and it's succesors (Manchester M1 etc ...) are all destroyed, dismantled or lost, the ones in museums are all just parts, or replicas ... this is an original potentially working computer