World’s Oldest Still-Working Computer

“With buttons, levers and flashing lights, this looks like a computer control room. It is, however, just the computer. The Harwell Dekatron weighs 2.5 tons, contains 10,000 moving parts and can work without a break for 80 hours a week. So what does it do? It churns out lots of sums very quickly. In other words, it’s a calculator. When it was built in 1951, this computer was a marvel of technology. Yet only a couple of decades later, the same processing power was available in something a little smaller. Pocket-sized, to be accurate. But for its time, the Harwell Dekatron was highly impressive.” w/ photos

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