World's oldest digital computer is turned back on after 61 years

reply to post by detachedindividual


thank you for the video
i know a lot about computers
and this is really nice
it keeps the 5 bulbs lit or unlit as the numbering system
and the computing operations,
or, and, xor is done by mechanical flip flaps those making the sound... -so nice
very illustrative as they say in the video
this is basically the same design we use today... just a bit smaller..
its a grand semi mechanical or semi electronic digital system
maybe we should start to improve a little on that design or???
i would like to have a hardware factory, but i guess i need a lot of money and skill
today everything is in the single chip
but i still fell that something is missing.....????

Originally posted by Unrealised

Originally posted by detachedindividual
. I wonder where we would be right now if it wasn't for the pioneers back then?

Outside doing things with our families, or inside having a family dinner at the table.
Basically, in a better place.

It's easy to say that so flippantly, but without this machine would we ever have created the Cat-scan, pace makers, defibrillators, keyhole surgery...

You wouldn't be on this forum right now, you wouldn't know half of what is actually happening in the world, you might not even be able to fly thousands of miles on vacation when you want to, you couldn't call up someone who emigrated to another country and speak to them properly.

For every invention there are potentially millions of new inventions either born from it or inspired by it.

That's why my thoughts on the Large Hadron Collider changed. I viewed it as wasteful and pointless, and said that the vast amounts of money could have been used more effectively in solar energy research and would probably have paid off by now in ways we can only begin to imagine. But there is no doubt that many new inventions will come from it, either inspired by the results they see or the technology they developed for its creation in the first place