# World's Oldest Digital Computer Restored



## Kreij (Nov 22, 2012)

> The 61-year-old Harwell Dekatron — about the size and weight of an SUV — was originally hailed as a slow, steady machine capable of delivering error-free calculations while running for 90 hours a week. It has survived to become the oldest original working digital computer following the announcement of its completed restoration by The National Museum of Computing in the U.K. on Tuesday.





> The computer relies on 480 relays that have more in common with telephone exchanges rather than modern PCs or Macs. Such relays sit inside a collection of racks that also hold 828 flashing Dekatron valves — gas-filled counting tubes used in the early days of computing rather than the transistors of modern electronics.



_From  this article, courtesy of TechNewsDaily_
_Image courtesy of The National Museum of Computing_


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Nov 22, 2012)

Thats just cool.


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## VulkanBros (Nov 22, 2012)

Impressive - but take a look at this:

Decoding the world’s first computer:

http://blog.hmns.org/2012/11/decoding-the-worlds-first-computer-unravel-the-mysteries-of-the-antikythera-mechanism-at-this-distinguished-lecture/


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## Drone (Nov 22, 2012)

That's cool.

The Atanasoff–Berry Computer was the first electronic *digital* computer (1937-42). It wasn't programmable though. It can only solve systems of linear equations.

It was rebuilt. Here's the replica










The world's first electronic, digital, computer that was *programmable* is Colossus.
It was rebuilt in 2007









[yt]m2KVD-V2zr0[/yt]

And here's Z3, computer created by Konrad Zuse. It was built in 1941 and was the first programmable computer featuring *binary and floating point arithmetic*.


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## t77snapshot (Nov 22, 2012)

sorry for the off-topic, but I've never seen embedded youtube videos on TPU before!  Thanks for sharing though.


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## Kreij (Nov 22, 2012)

They've been around for quite awhile now. Just use the[yt][/yt] tags.


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## t77snapshot (Nov 22, 2012)

Kreij said:


> They've been around for quite awhile now. Just use the[yt][/yt] tags.



Then how come no body uses them like all the other forums? I thought I read somewhere awhile back that TPU didn't allow embedded videos?


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## Kreij (Nov 22, 2012)

t77snapshot said:


> Then how come no body uses them like all the other forums? I thought I read somewhere awhile back that TPU didn't allow embedded videos?



I'm not sure what you mean, t77, people use them all the time in the Games section.


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## HammerON (Nov 22, 2012)

Just check out the BF3 Clubhouse

On topic - I like the name Dekatron


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## t77snapshot (Nov 22, 2012)

Kreij said:


> I'm not sure what you mean, t77, people use them all the time in the Games section.





HammerON said:


> Just check out the BF3 Clubhouse
> 
> On topic - I like the name Dekatron



Oh I remember now, sorry guys.. I've been living under a rock for quite some time now.

Dekatron sounds like a villainous character


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