Conservation society for historic computers

Citation

Hutton, D.M. (1999), "Conservation society for historic computers", Kybernetes, Vol. 28 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1999.06728eab.004

Conservation society for historic computers

Keywords British Computer Society, Conservation, Computers

The Computer Conservation Society is a flourishing group of the British Computer Society. Its work on historic computers has already being recognised and its activities are progressing so well that it is appealing for more volunteers for its projects. Many readers will be enthusiastic about their plans concerning landmark software. This is an area of conservation that many scientists thought might be neglected in the rush to preserve the great hardware of earlier years.

In a recent report the society said that the Colossus code-breaking computer from the 1939-45 war is already on view in its original home in Bletchley Park but work on a Bombe decoder, invented by Alan Turing has got to a stage (March 1999) where more specialist volunteers are needed. These include an advisor on getting plastic mouldings made, small precision and simple part manufacturers, etc. The contact for this is: John Harper. Tel: 01462 451970 and at bombe@jharper.demon.co.uk

As an interesting aside the report tells us that Bombe was an electromechanical device but so tuned to its task that a simulation on a modern PC was said to take 15 hours to do what a Bombe did in five minutes.

Other support is needed so that more people can see the Baby, the world's first stored program computer, in action. Readers will recall that this machine was rebuilt and switched on again last summer, 50 years to the minute after its first run. Details were included in this journal (see Kybernetes, Vol. 27). It is housed at Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. Help is needed and volunteers should contact: Chris Burton, Tel: +44 (0)1691 791274.

Many scientists will still recall the early Pegasus Computer produced by the Ferranti company. This has found a home in London's Science Museum. Work, we are told is progressing on the restoration of an Elliot 401 which is now at the stage where wiring is being duplicated.

The Computer Conservation Society's plans for preserving old software were outlined by David Holdsworth,who is in charge of the project. He says that:

The plan is to use today's long-term data preservation techniques to keep ICL's George, Mercury Autocode and other operating systems and compliers in a machine readable form indefinitely.

This is good news because these programs represent the true beginnings of the software that present users take for granted. People who have used this software and who may have copies or access to it are asked to contact the project supervisor at e-mail: d.holdsworth@leeds.ac.uk or Tel: +44 (0)113 233 5402.

It should also be noted that the 50th Anniversary of the Edsac 1 computer was celebrated by Cambridge University 's Computing Laboratory at a two day meeting on 15-16 April 1999. It included talks about Edsac and the laboratory's subsequent work and historic exhibitions and demonstrations of current research. Details may still be available about the event from: edsac99@cl.cam.ac.uk and www.cl.cam.ac.uk/uoccl/misc/edsac99/