One of the first computers in the world, EDSAC is being rebuilt at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. Andrew Herbert takes us on a walk around inside the computer.
The computer memory is pulses of sound waves in long tubes of mercury.
Which was invented before the electronic computer as part of RADAR, believe it or not. In fact the concept is kind of obvious, in that context and compared to more exotic kinds of memory such as the Williams Tube.
Yeah, it’s a pretty simple concept alright. I can’t imagine it was all that stable though if you had a lot of vibration around…
I think this whole project is wonderful.
Good on them
Minor correction, should probably say “electronic computers” instead of just computers.
The “pascaline” computer from 1642 is considered by most as the first computer, but even the Antikythera from 100BC can arguably be considered a computer, or at the very least a computational instrument.
Edited 2015-06-22 17:28 UTC