Simon Edmondson Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 A friend sent me this photo of the city of Norwich ( about 20 miles from here ) taking delivery of its first computer... I'm guessing its sometime in the 60's, judging by the clothes and hairstyles. I was amused by the two blokes in white coats supervising and what look like managers pushing at the back. The transport company are from the town about a mile from here, population about 5,000. The times they have a changed... He subsequently sent the original link. 1957 apparently http://www.anorak.co.uk/391717/technology/...r-in-1957.html/ There is a link on the same page to ventriloquist dummies which may be of interest to ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted March 23, 2014 Hash Fellow Share Posted March 23, 2014 1957- first office computer delivered 1958- first office rule against playing games on the company computer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
largento Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 Given the year, it was probably this computer, the 405: This lucky office had two of them! [EDIT] Actually, it may be the very one in the photo: I got this photo off this website, which has an old science magazine story showing the computer being installed in Norwich. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Edmondson Posted March 23, 2014 Author Share Posted March 23, 2014 Given the year, it was probably this computer, the 405: This lucky office had two of them! [EDIT] Actually, it may be the very one in the photo: I got this photo off this website, which has an old science magazine story showing the computer being installed in Norwich. In the 1990's the local University ( University of East Anglia ) used to describe Norwich as "Britain's most isolated city", and they were not overstating the case. Fun to think that Norwich was once at the forefront of social and technological change. At the time of that photo there would have been no motorways or even dual carriageways, (they didn't arrive until the 90's), the truck in the photo probably didn't do more than 30mph max. 1957 was very early to have a computer anywhere but, in Norwich town council that is really outstanding. regards simon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted March 23, 2014 Hash Fellow Share Posted March 23, 2014 A video of some school boys using the 405 and playing a game where they pretend to be bits in a register f1DtY42xEOI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuchur Posted March 23, 2014 Share Posted March 23, 2014 A video of some school boys using the 405 and playing a game where they pretend to be bits in a register f1DtY42xEOI Wow, that was a long time ago... I often wonder how they would have reacted if some day a guy comes along, putting a modern Ultrabook on their desk telling them: "This is the result of what you have founded!". And if he would be an ass, he would show them a fails compiliation on Youtube or some kind of "cute cats going wild" video or some kind of porn... Or, what is a little depressing: How long would it take a modern information scientist with all his knowledge if you put him/her on an island without a computer or any kind of modern helpers till he really could use his knowledge again... These guys may have had a chance to get there some day (unlikely but less unlikely than most of the digital natives today)... would we have a chance too? See you *Fuchur* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted March 24, 2014 Hash Fellow Share Posted March 24, 2014 Those kids would be in their late 50's/early 60's now... they may well have the ultra book now! And it probably still breaks down every 12 hours of run time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuchur Posted March 24, 2014 Share Posted March 24, 2014 Those kids would be in their late 50's/early 60's now... they may well have the ultra book now! And it probably still breaks down every 12 hours of run time. Yeah, but what if they would have had a technology leap in a sudden and saw it when they used that thing there... Did you come in touch with computers being a child? I have but for me that means I worked with a 286 with some kind of DOS, which already is a whole lot like the stuff we do today... I never had to cope with the electronics behind it very much... yes I have built some computers with components, but I never had to understand the deeper functionalities of the parts... I know what a MoBo is, briefly what a graphic card does and how it looks, etc. I also know what a transistor is and does and I know about other basic electronic parts but the inbetween there is a black box for me... And if you are on an island and there is no electric energy or hardwarestores, etc. You need to know how to create electric energy which means you need to design generators, you need to built stoves to work the metalls, get the chemical stuff going to come up with plastics to hold your electronical circuitry and so on. It is so much you need to know to do computer work... if a hole lot of other people do not provide you with so many "basic" parts it really would take you centuries to come up with all that before you could do what you are really good at even so we know that much today and many of us have a basic understand of what is going on in a generator, etc. we just know so little about actually doing it... See you *Fuchur* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted March 24, 2014 Hash Fellow Share Posted March 24, 2014 My first "contact" with computers was the stuff I saw on TV and movies where the computer would talk and all you had to do was ask it some questions and it would solve a problem. Everything that has come along since then has fallen short of that ideal. My first computer was this plastic kit I got when I was about 9. It had 3 bits. I never understood how it worked. 9th grade was when we first got to use a computer in school. It was a teletype that you could type in lines of BASIC and the output would be typed back to you. It was all on paper with no monitor but it was "live" so you got some sense of interaction. The teacher taught us simple things like loops and variables. "Computer time" was a big deal then. I recall some kid got in trouble because he used eight hours of "time." College was way worse. You'd type up a "deck" of punch cards and give them to someone in an office and you'd wait until the next the day to see if your program ran. That was all paper output, no monitor: After all that, the Commodore-64 i got after college did seem pretty magical even if it didn't listen or talk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
*A:M User* Roger Posted March 26, 2014 *A:M User* Share Posted March 26, 2014 As Fuchur has pointed out there is an awful lot that you would have to do to build any sort of modern computer, assuming you're stuck on a desert island. You would need to refine copper, gold and other metals Create a generator for electricity Create batteries to store electricity Motors to spin the hard disks Rare earth magnets for the hard disks Refine silicon for the chips Advanced optics for photolithography Somehow produce plastics for chip housings and other things Create a keyboard and mouse for input (probably lost of other stuff I'm forgetting) To come up with all this from scratch, even with something as simple as an 8 bit machine made out of 7400 series logic, would require a ton of man hours and resources. It would probably be possible for a single person to create the machine, OS and programs for a PC like the above, something along these lines: http://www.msarnoff.org/6809/ That guy did it, after all. However, he didn't have to fab all the components himself from scratch so that is probably the most difficult part. You might have to make some in-between systems to get there, like an electro-mechanical or entirely mechanical computer. If you're stuck on an island with a bunch of cast-off tech, it might be a good bit easier. But still a pain as I'm sure you'd have to be a crazy skilled hardware and software hacker to cobble something useable out of savenged bits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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