Today I was able to make a quick visit to the National Computer Museum at Bletchley Park, an absolute must for any geek in the UK. To see Colossus running, to hear it and smell the worlds first programmable computer running is an amazing experience.
There is a great story behind the reconstruction of this machine, which is told at the brilliant Tony Sale’s website.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network
3 replies on “Panorama – The Colossus Computer”
Did I really pay £399 for a BBC Model B back in 1984? And then another £100 for a 40 track single sided (100K) 5.25″ floppy drive? Then there was the 2MHz processor, and 32K of ram, of which about 12k was used by the OS, leaving me with a whopping 20k.. woo hoo!
[…] the Museum last week, support is critically needed I hate to think what the electricity bill for Colossus is […]
Ed,
Have a look at the Z1.
http://www.sdtb.de/Computing-and-automation.1256.0.html
I’ve had the fortune to see 6 Enigma machines while in Germany. The best one is located at the former British Airbase Gatow in west Berlin. It includes the code wheels on display.
Gatow is an air musuem today.
http://vector1media.com/vectorone/images/Gatow.flv