Colossus & Other Early Computers

The Colossus, EDSAC and Harwell Dekatron (WITCH) were some of the first electronic computers. In this video I check them out at the National Museum of Computing, along with an ICL 2966 mainframe from the 1980s.

Note that my intertitle which says "Harwell Dekatron (WHICH)" contains a typo -- it should say "Harwell Dekatron (WITCH)". Sorry about this. :(

If you enjoy these videos, you may also like my coverage of some early laptop and mobile computers:

[GamingHistorySource]

Hard to believe that we carry computers in our pockets now that are over a million times more powerful than these old machines. Interesting video ! I really enjoyed this. :)

[cyrfung]

This channel feels like the 80's technology shows I watched back then. I absolutely love it.

[stuartthegrant]

So glad you gave Tommy Flowers the credit for building Colossus.
A most interesting look at the history of computers in the UK.

[zboy]

Enjoyable video, thanks. Would love to see more historic computing episodes, covering the 70s, 80s and 90s!

[Screamingtut]

I worked at DEC Digital Equipment Corp back in 1978 -1981 then from 1983-1985 I first started to work on hard drives similar to the one's on the ILC system but they were made by CDC Control Data Corp. they were 200-300 MB 20 heads (two for each platter one platters was a servo signal to keep all the data heads aligned.

[southsidedojo]

Man, words can't explain how much I really liked this. Thank you Chris for the education you share with the world and I really hope you never get burned out. Cheers

[emph]

Very interesting, love seeing these ancestors to the modern computers. The fact that Bletchley Park is still being used as a museum is a surprise and what better place to display these great machines.

[lucatrifan]

These videos on location are really nice, I hope you will do more of them in the future, maybe have some guests or other computer YouTubers from the UK.

[Bearthedancingman]

You make a better documentary than History Channel. I'd listen to you teaching computer history for hours if I could. It's so interesting.

[vgamesx]

7:46 "200MB of storage" Damn, who could possibly use that much storage? Nobody will ever need more than 50MB.

[hydraADL]

I visited this museum on my recent trip to Europe, all the way from Australia. I have so many good memories of these computers. thanks for uploading.

[BernardColdwell]

This takes me back a while, great to see the old machines, the ICL was a very popular machine in its day. Having worked for many many years with those hard disks and tape systems its a long way from the mini and modern computers today. Thanks for sharing

[vgamesx]

It is quite amusing though, how a computer only 60-70 years ago could easily fill an entire room, whereas today we have tiny little boards the size of a couple fingers such as the Pi Zero which cost about $10 and still has insanely more processing power, while only consuming as little as 5 watts, it may not be the scifi world people dream of but it's still pretty amazing sometimes.

[alavena]

Been there a couple years ago. It was an extraordinary experience. Lots of things to see and activities for kids as well. A whole day well spent.

[XSpImmaLion]

Great stuff Chris! Some of the hardware later in the video I had the opportunity to see as a child in operation where my dad worked... fond memories. xD
My dad was an engineer for a contractor company of the Itaipu dam here in Brazil, but before myself coming into existence, he had already worked with valves, punch cards and whatnot. He used to teach classes later in his career so he had samples of the stuff... very unfortunately lost in between moving from one place to another. The oldest PC stuff I still have is probably some floppy disks.

I remember that the job place he had into the computer department was an entire building where half of it was the refrigerated server room, and the rest of the building were offices with dumb terminals built litteraly inside desks (custom made desks with a monitor and keyboard built in). They still used floppy disks of the 8 inch size.

The server room had a whole bunch of wardrobe sized units, some with spinning taperolls, some for other purposes. The room was refrigerated 24/7, floor had these thick cardboard-like perforated tiles with all the cables running under it.
But the thing I remember the most is the printer. It was pretty huge for a child me. xD
It opened up like a fridge, and had it's own vacuum cleaner to suck up the bits of paper that came off that perforated paper used for dot matrix printers. All very fascinating.

[hondacxrider]

I bought at auction a box full of old valves, a few of these were MOD stamped and red. Just the types of valves colossus used, and I was able to donate them to the late Tony Sale to help his rebuild. I actually met him and a really nice guy.

[b_mb]

Great to see you out and about "on location" Chris!
Top-notch content as always!

[kolkoki]

One of the most interesting video on YouTube at the time. computer history is fascinating.

[joshpayne]

I had the pleasure of visiting the National Museum of Computing and Bletchley Park last month. An incredible place!

[leewmlee]

The ICL 2966 brought back fond memories of school. my friends and I spent many many happy hours mucking around on it before pcs were widely available. to get around the time limit quota assigned to each student, after spending a few hrs on a session, we used to login concurrently from another terminal, logout from the original terminal, then logout out from the newly logged in terminal. the newly logged out terminal overwrote the time usage of the earlier session. we were careful to make sure that our usage was about 80-90% of our weekly quota to avert suspicions.