Sumner said : "Why are there no British computers?"
(Anybody who doesn't want to hear about computers please stop here, I don't
want to bore the list)
For the purposes of this note LBC = Little British Computer ;^)
Now you've done it!!! (steam mode on!!!) (grin)
(Actually, not mad or anything, just setting the record straight.)
Back at the beginning of the forties when the USA was still clutching itself
and hoping Hitler would spontaneously combust (Hey! it happened to the Mayor
of Warsaw, so who knows...), England was somewhat involved in building
electronic machines to break the codes of Germany and Japan. It had a
certain urgency since Hitler's version of a "denial of service" attack
involved somewhat more than defacing your web site. (The Poles really got
the code-breaking ball rolling here as their motivation was even more
personal)
At a place called Bletchley Park they had a somewhat bright gentleman called
Alan Turing working on codes. Computers are still called Turing machines by
some scientists. If I recall, by the early forties the scientists there had
a working digital code breaker running at full speed. Colossus was the first
programmable electronic computer - researched, designed and created at
Bletchley.
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/
Modern electronics really started with the IFF and radar systems in England.
Actually access to these technologies was part of the price put to Britain
to gain America's help in the war. (Remember the cavity magnetron?)
My dad was a radio mechanic in the RAF during war and saw many of the early
things put in place.
One of the whiz-guys Freddie Williams, who designed many of these things,
went to the US to help out the ENIAC project in 1946:
http://www.computer50.org/mark1/williams.html
In 1948, Williams was back in Britain and the world's first digital computer
with a stored program was running in Manchester England.
Here's a link to the museum of computing in Manchester where these things
were done.
http://www.computer50.org/kgill/index.html
My father remembers well being a lab technician hand-grinding quartz
crystals to build the oscillators for the first clock circuits. He had
people staring at him bug-eyed because he could build a 100 Mhz crystal
oscillator around 1951. (could be earlier not sure) Then he went to
university (UCL) in Electrical Engineering. During his time there they had a
50th anniversary party for the original participants in the invention of the
thermionic tube at UCL.
Out of school, he joined up with English Electric who had jumped on the
computer bandwagon at the very beginning.
I enclose a link to the English Electric DEUCE computer:
http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~ad161/deuce1.html
http://www3.oup.co.uk/computer_journal/hdb/Volume_02/Issue_04/020164.sgm.abs
.html
On a more modern note, I spent a few years building parallel imaging
computers that were stuffed full of the INMOS transputer chips.
Frankly if it wasn't for the fact that rebuilding after the war practically
put England into the third world, it is most likely that they would have
stayed at the economic forefront of the high-tech revolution. As it was the
brain-drain of the end of the 50s and early 60s (the time when my father
came over to Canada on an English Electric transfer) moved the effort to
North America for 50 years. I would still probably get beaten up by many
Brits who would rightly speak of the excellent first-principles work being
done there.
I seem to recall it was an IBM type who estimated the world-wide market for
computers at 5-6 machines. There's vision for you. (yeah, yeah I know what
he meant, but even so...)
Anyway, not to put a point upon it, the "modern" digital revolution may
indeed have come to fruition in the USA, but it most definitely did NOT
start there and it was anything but an exclusively American effort.
Cheers,
Mark Hooper
-----Original Message-----
From: Sumner Weisman [mailto:sweisman@gis.net]
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 4:25 PM
To: Triumphs
Subject: Reader's Digest Triumph Joke
Several people have asked me what the joke was that just appeared in March
Reader's Digest, "Virtual Hilarity" section on computer humor. I haven't
received my copy yet, and sent it in two years ago, but here it is from
memory:
"One of my main hobbies is restoring old British sports cars. It's a very
popular hobby, and we even have discussion groups on the Internet.
Recently, someone posted this riddle... 'Why are there no British computers?
Because nobody has figured out a way to make them leak oil!' "
Sumner Weisman
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 09:17:51 -0500
From: "Sumner Weisman" <sweisman@gis.net>
Subject: Reader's Digest
Rich,
Thanks for the information! I didn't know it was in -- haven't received my
copy yet. Of course, I got the idea from this list! That was actually sent
in two years ago.
Sumner
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 22:12:09 -0600
From: "Rich White" <rlwhitetr3b@hotmail.com>
Subject: Reader's Digest
Did anyone else see the joke Sumner sent Reader's Digest?
Check page 60A of the March 2002 issue.
Rich White St. Joseph, IL USA
'63 TR3B TCF587L
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