This is the WHICH, the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell. It is the oldest functioning digital computer and thanks to a lengthy restoration process you can go and see it in person at The National Museum of Computing in Milton Keynes (Northwest of London in the UK).
The system was first put into operation in 1951. It’s function is both familiar and foreign. First off, it uses decimal rather than binary for its calculations. And instead of transistors it uses electromechanical switches like are found in older automatic telephone exchanges. This makes for very noisy and slow operation. User input is taken from strips of paper with holes punched in them. As data is accumulated it is shown in the registers using decatrons (which have since become popular in hobby projects). Luckily we can get a look at this in the BBC story about the WITCH.
According to the eLinux page on the device, it was disassembled and put into storage from 1997 until 2009. At that point it was loaned to the museum and has been undergoing cleaning, reassembly, and repair ever since.
[Thanks David]
But can it run Linux?
There’s a debian distro for it: witchebian. (c:
>World’s oldest functioning digital computer reminds us of a telephone exchange
maybe its because it was made using telephone exchange parts?
^^^ This, all of those parts are very common (and many still working) in the UK telephone network. The rebuild of Colossus used many parts donated by BT as they decommissioned equipment.
The Zuse Z4 was build 6 years earlier and still works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z4_(computer) . So this is not the oldest functioning digital computer but still very impressive ;)
it is my understanding that the Z4 is no longer functional…. hence the qualifying statement in the title…
> And instead of transistors it uses electromechanical switches..
Doesn’t that make it analog?
No, it would still be digital as long as the switches were only capable of discrete values and not continuous ones.
“This is the WHICH” “Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell” ” the BBC story about the WITCH.”
Am I mistaken, or should it be WITCH the first time as well? It’s an easy typo to make!
Which WHICH/WITCH is which?!? =P
Pretty sure this is called dekatron or something, and only became nick named witch when it was relocated to some poly tech.
Or has the Metro misled me yet again?
Called Dekatron after the counting/storage tubes used (very cool).
‘thanks to a lengthy restoration process you can go and see it in person’
See?! Question is, can I run programs on it?
Wait in line with your card stack!
It’d be nice to have a description of how it works. How to program (patchboard? paper tape?) etc.
There’s a paper from 1951 linked from the eLinux page. The Computer Conservation Society website has some interesting material, including a programming manual:
http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/witch.htm . This machine was once used to teach computing, after all.
Ha! So this was installed in my local tech when I was 4 years of age eh? It sort of makes me feel privileged…
Alas a few months later I was on a boat bound for Australia where my local tech had it’s first computer installed, when, lets see, was it last year? ;-)
The memory stores on this computer use Dekatron glow transfer counting tubes to store each digit. There are two types used, the GC10B (the ones that glow orange), which are common, and the GC10A (the ones that glow purple), which are frightfully rare. Back when the team first started to restore this device, they caused a stir in the tube collector community by putting out a request looking for a donation of 800 or so GC10A tubes, wholly unaware that most tube collectors assumed there were less than 800 GC10A tubes left in the entire world, period. Fortunately the GC10A and GC10B are largely interchangeable; I strongly suspect they are keeping most of the ample stock of GC10A’s they found with the computer in storage and using much more common GC10Bs wherever possible.
Now, run a few missile projectile calculations, quickly, those damn commies are at it again! Hurry!
The only winning move is not to play!
does it run windows XP or ubuntu 8.04?
Bet it boots faster than Windows.
It doesn’t boot at all. It doesn’t use a bootstrap loader or even an operating systems.
But the real question is can it load Hack a Day’s retro site?
Seeing things like this always makes me appreciate the amazing technology we have sitting at our fingertips :) (Oh, and I really want to take a laptop back in time, you know, just to screw with them a bit!)
yeah and play battlefield 3 while they change punch cards :D
Oooh thats it, i need to finally get to the Museum of Computing..