The world's oldest working computer

Davey Winder
Friday, 04 September 2009 16:28

Your IT - Home IT

Amazingly, the WITCH remained an educational resource until 1973 when it was first put on display in a science museum and then taken apart and placed into storage.

Now TNMOC plans to put it all back together again.

"The TNMOC team of engineers is eager to start the restoration work" Murrell says "they have proved their skills, perseverance and sheer ingenuity in many projects and for most of them this will be the toughest project yet. It’s the computing equivalent of the raising of the Mary Rose and they are up to challenge!"

In order to fund the project to rebuild this relay-based computer which used 900 Dekatron gas-filled tubes each capable of holding just a single digit in memory, using paper tape for both input and program storage, TNMOC is selling 25 shares in the computer restoration at UKP £4500 each.
 
If all goes to plan, the WITCH will take over from the 1956 Pegasus, currently on display at the Science Museum in London, as the earliest original functioning computer in the world.

TNMOC does admit that there are 'functioning rebuilds' of earlier machines such as the Colossus Mk 2 elsewhere, however. These include the famous Manchester Baby, or Small-Scale Experimental Machine to be formal, which was not rebuilt using the original parts.

We wish TNMOC luck with the project as the WITCH will make a great exhibit to help map the development of computing from the ultra-secret pioneering efforts of the 1940s through the mainframes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s.