Bob W wrote: > > 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
And, as there was no storage or memory, the tape was looped and cycled continuously. There was a satisfying clunk from the relays and different lights lit up as each cycle finished. Chris -- 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.
