World's Oldest Digital Computer Restored

[Kreij]

The 61-year-old Harwell Dekatron — about the size and weight of an SUV — was originally hailed as a slow, steady machine capable of delivering error-free calculations while running for 90 hours a week. It has survived to become the oldest original working digital computer following the announcement of its completed restoration by The National Museum of Computing in the U.K. on Tuesday.

The computer relies on 480 relays that have more in common with telephone exchanges rather than modern PCs or Macs. Such relays sit inside a collection of racks that also hold 828 flashing Dekatron valves — gas-filled counting tubes used in the early days of computing rather than the transistors of modern electronics.

From this article, courtesy of TechNewsDaily
Image courtesy of The National Museum of Computing

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

Thats just cool.

 

[VulkanBros]

Impressive - but take a look at this:

Decoding the world’s first computer:

http://blog.hmns.org/2012/11/decoding-the-worlds-first-computer-unravel-the-mysteries-of-the-antikythera-mechanism-at-this-distinguished-lecture/

 

[Drone]

That's cool.

The Atanasoff–Berry Computer was the first electronic digital computer (1937-42). It wasn't programmable though. It can only solve systems of linear equations.

It was rebuilt. Here's the replica

The world's first electronic, digital, computer that was programmable is Colossus.
It was rebuilt in 2007

[yt]m2KVD-V2zr0[/yt]

And here's Z3, computer created by Konrad Zuse. It was built in 1941 and was the first programmable computer featuring binary and floating point arithmetic.

 

[t77snapshot]

sorry for the off-topic, but I've never seen embedded youtube videos on TPU before! Thanks for sharing though.

 

[Kreij]

They've been around for quite awhile now. Just use the[yt][/yt] tags.

 

[t77snapshot]

They've been around for quite awhile now. Just use the[yt][/yt] tags.

Then how come no body uses them like all the other forums? I thought I read somewhere awhile back that TPU didn't allow embedded videos?

 

[Kreij]

Then how come no body uses them like all the other forums? I thought I read somewhere awhile back that TPU didn't allow embedded videos?

I'm not sure what you mean, t77, people use them all the time in the Games section.

 

[HammerON]

Just check out the BF3 Clubhouse

On topic - I like the name Dekatron

 

[t77snapshot]

I'm not sure what you mean, t77, people use them all the time in the Games section.

Just check out the BF3 Clubhouse

On topic - I like the name Dekatron

Oh I remember now, sorry guys.. I've been living under a rock for quite some time now.

Dekatron sounds like a villainous character