To the extent that one would have booted such a machine.
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, first ran in 1951 and was designed to perform mathematical calculations; it lasted until 1973.
Categories
More like this
In my discussion with Sal Cordova in this post, one point came up which I thought was interesting, and worth taking the time to flesh out as a separate post. It's about the distinction
Sean watches a panel discussion on whether the universe is a computer, looks up the definition of a computer, and decides that instead the universe is a
This glib article from the Wired Blog Gadgets Lab discusses some of the "crazy" ideas for building computers.
As noted by Lance, the new journal ACM Transactions on Computation Theory is now accepting papers. Note for quantum computing theorists:
Why do they have to reboot it - blue screen of death?
Yes, but will it run Linux?
and
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these?
The size of a small city?
I thought Linux was supposed to run on everything. But whatever; I won't be impressed until I see the Antikythera Mechanism run Linux.
Ah, the nice warm glow of nostalgia. Oh wait, that's the multiple kilowatt radiation of the power supply and electronic tubes.
Having it run would be a truly underwhelming experience; Texas Instrument pocket calculators from the early 1970s were far more capable and they ran off a 9V battery.
The paper tape storage will have to be faked (or at least not entirely the original); paper tape was awful.
I love these modern computers that fit in my pocket and can run for almost a month off a 3V battery; they're the equivalent of almost 40 Apple2e's - try stuffing those beasts into your pockets.