I've known about this machine since I was quite young, and it's fantastic to see it working after all these years. Not just because of it's age, but because it is wonderful to watch. Incidentally, Cecil Ramsbottom was also involved in the development of radar during WWII, and I've heard that he added the extra panel of Dekatron tubes on the far left during the machines's time in Wolverhampton, because he figured that it would run a lot faster (relatively speaking!). I know this because I'm one of his grandchildren, and pleased to be so! Cecil died in 2003, but I'm sure he'd loved to have been at this event. If he was still alive today he'd probably be thrilled at how far we've come with technology over gthe past decade.
I come back to this video every so often to remind myself how far we've come as a civilization, and how brilliant were the people of the past to have created such amazing things with such harsh constraints and lack of supporting technology we all take for granted. And I always feel sad when I see these old scientists. They're all giants who paved the way for every piece of tech we enjoy today, but time will claim them all, and did for many of their contemporaries. Imagine what amazing things they would've done if they lived to our days! Unfortunately, death is one of things that will be the hardest to beat, but science will prevail in the end, and thanks to the efforts of brilliant people like these cool old scientists!
I salute a number of private collectors who gave their rare dekatron tubes free of charge to get this working, yet received not a single word of thanks. One was made to pay to enter the museum in order to donate. It was an appalling situation.
Fantastic old gents! So important to keep these machines for our heritage. If you think how quickly this tech has disappeared. I only wish more of the billion dollar tech companies contributed to the TNMOC so that more of our history remains with us.
Richard Soos it did not disappear we just made smaller, faster, smarter. and lot more but if you knew how computers work you would understand, and i am not saying i understand everything.
It did disappear, because of the Amstrad adverts, showing people throwing their old calculators and other machines out of the office windows into a skip.
I wonder if 66 years from now we'll be watching a similar video about the early Quantum computers, the engineer's that built them and the people who operated them.
The mechanical calculator Bart Fossey uses is a Danish machine called a Facit. I own one. This was a development of the original pinwheel handle-driven calculators, but designed to fit a smaller footprint, and was also uniquely the first calculating machine which used a single set of digit buttons 0 to 9 for input. This actually had disadvantages for certain operations (such as square roots) but the cause was the design requirement for a small footprint. Overall it was physically harder and much clunkier to use than a Comptometer or an Original Odhner.
What a great event! What a great story! So interesting to see the gentleman there who created and used and saved this great machine! 💙🤗💙 Makes my heart so happy! Because of men like them and machines like this, we have the technology that we enjoy and use today! One day a group of school kids will be staring in awe of at an iphone of the past with someone of our generation touting the benefits of such a device! 😂 History CAN and SHOULD be interesting at it's core! Well done to everyone involved! Sending Love From Boston, MA USA!
And, it used stepper units like what was used in telephone service. So, not only were the hundreds of tubes a problem, but so were the 1000 contact pairs. But, it was a marvel in its era.
Interesting video. Oh my...how far we have come!!! Just think...in 50 years...people will be watching a video about our iPads and our quad-core computers and laughing. lol Maybe...some of us well be there, with grey hair, explaining how it all worked!
Superb. I used to see it at Birmingham Science Museum, and always wondered if it still worked. I have a Guinness Book of Records from either 77 or 78 with it in. The photo shows it in the museum.
Hope you don't mind the correction but the photo in the Guiness Book of Records was taken in what was then Wolverhampton Polytechnic (later University) around the early 70's prior to it being moved to Birmingham Science Museum. It's my father in the photo.
Good news Harrell Dekatron / WITCH owners running older software, APPLE and MS is coming out with a new update API Library to interface these machines, so all your old code can now harmoniously integrate with newer software. ;)
Utterly wonderful - I owe my entire career to these pioneers and others. I sit in awe - knowing full well that if we engineers today had to build one with the same technological limitations? we'd likely fail where they succeeded.
It's got a face! ( the far right section). What a cute, charming and excellent computer! It reminds me of the one in the Twilight Zone episode called Agnes.
My math may be off but I think this machine used 414 bytes of RAM if I converted correctly. Someone once got doom to run on a modern pregnancy test which had I believe 64 bytes of RAM, So probably yes.
Iran across this old digital computer patent 3190554 where it ran on compressed air instead of electricity. Was this computer ever built and used for anything? Could one be built today using 3D printing? Thanks for the post.
any telephone engineer of the 50's would know all about these tubes also in usa the ibm used miles of those teletype machines to pass sicnals to each other over the phone lines.tape was read and pulses passed down the line a receiver printed out a punch tape that was fed in to the tele typer and printed out as a typewriter would.
I like to think that there are other giant intellects like these that are still striving away in quiet corners continuing the beautiful work of pushing the frontiers not to be recognised until they retire. It never ceases to amuse me that if you met one of there number in the street you would have no concept of the superhuman individual that you were in the presence of. The existence of such people reassures me that the human race is not just “mostly harmless“ but has promise. 😉
I love the storage modules in the left most racks - each one being 10 memory locations storing 9 decimal digits. Quite literally a case of "what you see is what you get". :)
so this is the first printer calculator? am i not under standing this correctly ?, even so ,so awesome to see the worlds oldest computer , to think now this function is a simple application on our mobile phone's ,
Yes, it's a massive AUTOMATED calculator. It may have been slow even for its day, a human with a mechanical calculator could keep up with it, but it made up for it by being very reliable. It could be left for long periods of time unattended. It was supposedly left running for 10 days unattended with a couple miles of input tape and was still running when someone came to check on it.
It's the machine spirit keeping it alive because it pleases the machine gods! My armor is contempt. My shield is disgust. My sword is hatred. In the Emperor's name, let none survive!
Hello Great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather! I see you are awake. :-)
Well, there's a range of devices between what we would call a calculator and a computer. This can be thought of a programmable calculator where it can be set up to perform calculation after calculation with very limited branching ability. The Computer Conservation Society website has some demo programs.
No but it does allow you to play games around or beside it. You might be able to place chess with a friend sitting on top of it. So Yes, you can I guess.
A pocket calculator is thousands of times faster, and I am talking a TI-58. Reliable? until a tube goes out, that is why they ran known calculations both before and after anything important. Tube failure rate was measured in hours as there were just such a number of them.
Arabhacks Actually, the beauty of the dekatron tube is that it is NOT a vacuum tube. It's a cold cathode gas filled tube. It's filled with neon, and has no filament to burn out. The ionization of the neon causes both the glow, and keeps a path open for electrons to flow. As long as you don't keep tubes on and unchanging (and look at that thing blink away...) you should be fine a very nice chunk of time! Even the very worst USSR made dekatrons at least were rated for thousands of hours. the GC10B was a legendary tube. Not sure what the WITCH uses, but those tall tubes could be them. Those tube are notoriously resistant to outgassing. and proper maintenance should clear cathode poisoning due to sputtering (metal actually being deposited by the ions).
3:12 “All these digital camera / devices have processors in them which are much much more powerfull than this Harwell Dekatron… And what are the millenials doing with it? Sending text messages and selfies…
Shut up. You're using one to comment on THIS VERY VIDEO! Just because of my age does not mean I couldn't care less. In fact I am extremely interested! But no, your artistic ass just had to be ageist. So here is my response: Ok boomer!