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World's oldest working computer gets fired up

With the advent of smaller, thinner, and lighter devices, it now seems crazy to think of a computer as a room-sized mechanism meant mostly for government use. But that's exactly what a computer was 61 years ago.

Now, visitors can see what the first hardware designers were doing when they created what is currently the world's oldest working digital computer -- the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell, or WITCH. The more than half-a-century old device has been restored and rebooted at its home in The National Museum of Computing in Buckinghamshire, England.

"In 1951 the … Read more

Restoration starts on one of oldest computers

Work began this week on restoring what will be the world's oldest working stored-program electronic computer.

Volunteers at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park--about 50 miles northwest of London--will rebuild the Witch machine--a computer first used in 1951 for atomic research.

Witch, or the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell, was based on telephone exchange relays and 900 Dekatron gas-filled tubes, which could each hold a single digit in memory. Paper tape was used to both input data for and store the output of the machine.

The device is not the oldest electronic calculating device but … Read more