Harwell Dekatron Computer ex Birmingham Science Museum working again

[sospiri]

No one else picked on this news item yet?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...clatters-action-lying-forgotten-20-years.html

I remember when I came out of the RAF in 1957, you could pick up dekatron tubes for a few shillings each and Post Office 3000 relays, of which the bulk of this machine is made, for five shillings or less each.

Nice to see it working again though.

Maurice

 

[geehigh]

Hello Maurice

Thanks for posting this up. Sorry that I'm a bit late to the party :courage:

The National Museum of Computing have now posted a video of the event up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYpPPIsxq64

They have also now published the book that was mentioned in the video:

Murrell K & Holroyd D: The Harwell Dekatron Computer ISBN 978-0-9567956-2-5

For Birmingham history buffs, I quote here the following brief passages from the book covering the Birmingham Musuem and its successor:

Birmingham Museum of of Science and Industry was a fascinating Aladdin’s cave of science and technology. It had opened in 1951 on the site of a former silver electroplating works. The building wasn't altogether suitable for a museum with a myriad of staircases and passageways connecting an almost endless series of rooms. This made visits all the more exciting because there was always something new to see and be surprised by. There were regular in-steam weekends when the majority of exhibits were running, and the smell of hot engines and steam and grease brought everything to life.

Murrell K & Holroyd D: The Harwell Dekatron Computer p.16

Sadly, Birmingham City Council closed the Museum of Science and Industry in 1997 – a great loss to the heritage of Birmingham. Many of the displays and machines were put into storage, some artefacts were transferred to other museums, and many were subsequently displayed at a new museum in Birmingham called 'ThinkTank: Birmingham Science Museum' – no longer a museum including industry, and quite a radical departure from the wonderful old haphazard museum.

Ibid. p.17

There is more on this subject included in the book, and you can either buy it from the National Museum of Computing Shop at Bletchley Park, or order one from Amazon. It's a very interesting little publication, with some nice glossy colour plates.

Best wishes

Graham.

 

[sospiri]

Many thanks for the reply Graham and it's wonderful to see this early computer working again. The quote from page 16 of the book is very relevant to many of us here on the Forum and our feelings about the closure of the Museum have certainly been voiced before. I was working for Birmingham City Transport who had a Social Club in the old Elkingtons Building as well as a Stationery Stores, so I spent many happy lunch hours in the Museum as well as in the other departments. Happy days.

Regards,

Maurice

 

[geehigh]

Hello again Maurice

A little story:

I took my son to the ThinkTank shortly after it opened in hope that a little practical knowledge from Birmingham’s premier new ‘shiny place’ would assist with his school work.

To my sadness and anger, I found the place an exemplar of 'style over substance', with information that was ephemeral, truncated, and poorly researched. Info on Birmingham's industrial history was negligible, and what captions there were riddled with errors, buzz-words, and misrepresentation (presumably in the name of easy-to-read brevity). The older exhibits imported from Newhall Street were either turned into glorified climbing frames or shown as quaint and irrelevant freak-show artefacts.

But by golly, was it interactive? Kids wiggled a section of a giant CD around: A sound came out. Buttons were pressed, lights lit, stuff happened. Much merriment. What was learned? Bugger all. It was just a glittering playground. The packaging was immaculate.

Mix this with high admission costs (even then), the constant un-damped racket made by other visitors and exhibits (which made even the very limited information available impossible to absorb), and it would be fair to say that our time and my money were wasted.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not a fan of pointless nostalgia as I think that is as much of a mug's game (and an industry) as anything else. Back at Newhall Street though, you could take time to roam around and take things in. In the ThinkTank there was always the next whizz-bang blitzing any forming thought. Scant knowledge was bestowed in easy-to-chew portion-controlled servings. I felt like I was being treated like a sheep in there (including the sensation of being fleeced).

I freely admit that I may be doing the place as it is now a gross injustice. My visit was quite some time ago, and I have not returned to ThinkTank. I understand that it has since won an award: Fair enough. The trouble is that my wife (a science teacher) has visited the place with classes many times recently and has just informed me that my bleak assessment is all too accurate.

Both my son and I now obtain our science and history fixes from locations where reading words of more than two syllables is not treated as a symptom of social maladjustment.

I sincerely hope that the place has improved since my visit. The indictment of ThinkTank for me is that I'm in no hurry to spend £12.25 to find out.

All the best

Graham. :devilish:

 

[sospiri]

Hi Graham,

I left Birmingham for the South Coast in 1961 and finally left the UK in 2005, so my visits to the city have been fairly limited, starting around 1988. By then, most of the stuff that I remembered had been demolished. The library (in fact most British libraries) seemed to have been turned into a glorified internet cafe to enable those out of work to while away a few hours without actually learning anything. What I had heard about the Think Tank was enough to persuade me to spend my limited hours on more worthwhile research elsewhere.

Next time I'm in the UK I must spend some time at Bletchley Park - that certainly looks interesting.

Regards,

Maurice

 

[geehigh]

I thoroughly recommend a visit to both the Bletchley Park Trust, and the National Museum of Computing (same site – different trust).

Bletchley park can fry your brain if you are prepared to let it. Here’s a video that I made of a talk about the Turing Bombe made in 2012 which gives a flavour of the fine quality and enthusiasm of the volunteers working there (apologies for the speech going in and out of sync. As luck would have it my camera had a faulty chip. I’ve been back since and re-shot the presentation, but I am still editing it at presnet):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZFol3gH1pg

The story carries its own fizz-bang element.

I also have some video interviews with the late Tony Sale which I hope to put up on my history blog at some point, although being shot on rather primitive digital equipment they need working on first.

The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley is also wonderful. They have a range of working computing machinery from slide-rules to a Cray supercomputer. They also have a fascinating range of analogue computers (usually missed out in the story of technology). Of course their pride and joy is the magnificent Colossus rebuild. It almost goes without saying that bits of the real wartime colossi were built in Birmingham, but you would expect that wouldn’t you? There’s not much Birmingham hasn’t made in it’s time.

The NMC brings a tear to my eye though, as I still own examples of most of the 8 bit micro exhibits: God I feel old.

All the best

Graham.

 

[sospiri]

Hi Graham,

Many thanks for the link to your video - I will need to watch that several times to fully understand what is going on. Our next visit to the UK is still indeterminate and some way off, but I have added Bletchley Park to the to do list.

Regards,

Maurice