witch

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

The 404 647: Where we bake meat into bread (podcast)

Today's episode of The 404 Podcast begins with a short lesson in Chinese breakfast foods and our love for combining savory meat into sweet bread. The dish in question is called char siu bao and it's a dim sum staple that you can also find in most Chinese bakeries--even Jeff seems to enjoy it, so you know it can't be that bad!

Before we make you too hungry, we'll touch on the new T-Mobile G2, the first smartphone to run on T-Mobile's HSPA+ network. The original T-Mobile G1 was the first Google Android phone released … 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

Yamaha makes virtual drums legit

If technologists worked as hard on energy issues as they do on virtual drum sets, perhaps we never would have heard of global warming. That's the way it sometimes seems, anyway, given how many percussive instruments that routinely come to market.

At least the latest example comes from an established name in music, Yamaha, unlike many of the generic products out there. Its "YDD-60 Digital Electronic Drum Machine" not only lets you bang away all day, but it also works without drumsticks at all, bongo-style, and provides 230 digital voices to accompany your arrangement if you're … Read more