The Strange Beauty of Historic Computers Brought Back From the Dead
Images: Computer History Museum
Looking t the picture above reminds me of the pictures my father shared with me of when he was in the United States Air Force. These machines look a lot like the ones he worked with. He told me that one of his jobs was the punch card machine in the intelligence room of the air force base he worked at. It amazes me that this IBM 1401 Room has taken over 10 years to put together.
Images: Computer History Museum
The picture above explains why it took so long to put these computers back in working condition. The were not the simple machines of today, with integrated circuit boards, and the restoration team only met once a week to work on then.
The Computer Conservation Society in England is restoring a computer named the WITCH (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell). The curator of this restoration is the organization's secretary Kevin Murrell. This computer was used in the Atomic Research facility in Harwell and is now housed in the British National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.
Most of the old computer equipment have been restored by hobbyist and ex-engineers that actually works on these massive and complicated machines in the late 50's and early 60's. Looking at the size and complexity of computers makes me realize how fortunate we are to have plug-and-play components to our computers today.
I have been building computers for about 10 years now and I do not have the degrees or skills the engineers had when computers were coming into existence.
For more pictures and information click on the link below.
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