> and here's a shot of Colossus, scanned from 35mm (probably in my brand > new MZ-S, so the exposure information should be recorded on the film; > now all I have to do is to find the actual film ...) > > http://www.jfwaf.com/temp/Bletchley-2.jpg > > The Colossus rebuild project was very much a work-in-progress in those > days; parts of the machine sort of worked, spasmodically, but the whole > thing was even more temperamental than the original version.
that's a good shot of the Colossus. It's hard to take in just how important it is, and how advanced it must was at the time - it must have seemed like magic to the non-scientists/mathematicians who knew about it. I was fascinated by the paper tape - we still used it as our main input method when I started in computing. Different format of course. I mentioned this to the chap who was minding the machine and mentioned how slow the Colossus was reading compared to the tape reader we used. He asked how fast it ran. I didn't know so he assumed (probably correctly, he knew his stuff) that it read at 1,000 cps. Colossus on the other hand, was reading at 5,000 cps even in the 1940s. Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
