On Sep 14, 2006, at 6:04 PM, Daniel Stenning wrote:
But I'm British - therefore TI is out.
Oh geez ... ok the Sinclair
Hoe about the valve ( tube) driven Enigma - ( was it ENIAC? )
that's my
kind of super - and you got central heating thrown in for free,
pluse a nice
gentle yellow glow when the covers were removed
The Enigma was a Bletchly Park thing and kept quiet til after the war
was over.
Eniac is one of the first (not THE first digital computer) and you
probably could have heated several houses with it.
The ABC (Atanasoff-Berry sp ?) has been credited as being the first
digital computer and actually there was a very long running dispute
about this.
Not forgetting the Babbage of course ;)
Now those were cool.
The difference engine actually has been built with modern materials
and works pretty much as designed.
The fact that Ada Lovelace was the programmer is also very neat.
Thank god for Comp Sci 409 - History of Computing at my alma mater
for which I still have the marvelous text book.
Most of this still sticks in my head along with some of the other
bizarre items the prof had.
1K of hand wired RAM which weighted about 500 pounds. It was the
small iron ferrite rings on wires from an old 1960's era computer.
He had more stuff stashed in fire escapes (and therefore fire
hazards) than I can recall.
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