Interesting bit of early computing and BR history

[EtchedPixels]

http://blog.jgc.org/2012/10/the-great-railway-caper-big-data-in-1955.html

[zwilnik]

Definitely interesting. I remember LEO1 from my O Level computer studies lessons (although it was more a passing mention of it being the first business computer in the UK).

[NeMo]

What I find remarkable is that during WW2 the good folks at Bletchley Park were coming up with ways to decipher codes using (and inventing) state of the art machines to do this. But by 1947 a tea shop company could build a computer to manage inventory.

Was computer technology not that backward during the War? I always assumed Turing and his colleagues were at the cutting edge, far ahead of anything else in the world. But was their equivalent computer technology in the US at least? Or did progress during the War proceed so fast that by 1947 computers had left the military domain and become part of the business world?

Cheers, NeMo

[willike1958]

Fascinating. Thanks for the link.
Kevin

[EtchedPixels]

Was computer technology not that backward during the War? I always assumed Turing and his colleagues were at the cutting edge, far ahead of anything else in the world. But was their equivalent computer technology in the US at least? Or did progress during the War proceed so fast that by 1947 computers had left the military domain and become part of the business world?

Leo was the very first, and Lyons actually hired all sorts of academic wizards from Cambridge who had built Edsac before.

It's a strange story - they weren't a huge tea shop company with a computer, they really were also the cutting edge computing company.

[Cypherus]

Strange how things just turn up relevant to a past life, Computing and all it's current technology all started with a need to accomplish something in a better way, Turins work during WWII was not actually his real 'Ureka' moment, his was many years younger when he outlined the principles of modern computing.

From that paper not only did the efforts of Bletchley Park begin but many others took up the challenge of inventing a workable computer and from one of those efforts that oddly enough came the Email address I use daily and have for many years.

To fill in a little but not all detail, some things are still not for public consumption it seems, the place I was employed had it's own internal ''Internet', all hand built and for the most part it worked in a fashion, No such thing as a Router or IP address, all this was done by hand and only one terminal could be connected to one other at a time by a monstrosity we called the 'Switch' due to the myriad wires that ran into it.

In short it worked like this, The sender had to contact the receiver by phone, both then had to proceed to the Switch were the connection was to be made between terminals, the process was simple enough, The receiver would identify his terminal socket and the sender there's on a panel with rows of jack plug sockets each numbered and coloured, A long cable would then be plugged into each socket, confirmed by the two parties and the transfer process could then begin.

Mine was on Row 'K', Black in colour and numbered 54, Many.....MANY years later I joined AOL when it first arrived in the UK and the first question of note they asked was for me to 'Invent' a personal screen name, after a few moments thought what better to use than my old alias and Kblackjack54 was born to the world of the intraweb.

Odd how things turn out. I once had chance to view Turins machine broken up and stored awaiting it's fate, since then I understand a working copy has been built though not sure were it has been installed, Hope it's at Bletchly.

Toodles o/.

[Railwaygun]

Foer some strange reason the name of Conrad Zuse  is not well known in GB - he was the inventor of the world's first programmable computer in 1941.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

I first came across him in the Technical Museum in Berlin, and on a recent visit, actually met his son, who has recreated his father's first machine.

I have a batch of pictures which I will try and upload this weekend ( after my trip on Le petit train du Somme). I can't upload on my iPad as the buttons on the screen don't work. That's the wonder of computers!

Nick R