| Title: | 1301 Open Day |
| Date: | 17th July 2011 |
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| Location: | Part of the Darling Buds Classic Car Show Demonstrations At Buss Farm, Bethersden, Kent |
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About the Event
The oldest working original electronic computer in the UK will be on public display at the Darling Buds Classic Car Show in Kent. The computer is in a barn on the farm in Kent which is the venue for the Car Show. The farm was used to film the "Darling Buds Of May" series, and that gives the theme for the show.
There will be demonstrations of the ICT 1301 computer throughout the day, and talks by members of the restoration team. The ICT 1301 Resurrection Project is a working group of the Computer Conservation Society.
About the ICT 1301 computer
"Flossie" is an ICT 1301 mainframe computer from 1962 era. It was serial number 6 - the first 1301 machine out of the factory. It is an example of second generation British mainframe design - whirling magnetic tape decks, lots of flashing lights and strange noises. "Flossie" is the oldest working original machine that is currently available for public demonstration in the UK.
It printed GCE pass slips at London University and was eventually sold as scrap to students who processed large club membership lists in 1970's before it came to its present location. Now a group of enthusiasts are reinstating the system to recover software contained in half inch 10 track magnetic tapes.
It boasts pounds shillings and pence arithmetic in hardware as standard. Plus punched cards, line printer, drum and core store etc. Discrete germanium transistors and definitely no keyboards or screens.
It is impressively huge and contains four thousand printed circuit boards, discrete germanium transistors, 2000 words of 48 bit magnetic core store, several drum stores, several spectacular magnetic tape transports, readers and punches for paper tape and cards, fast line printer.
It has a 1MHz clock and arithmetic for Sterling and decimal . Originally no video or typewriter - it´s controlled by buttons and flashing lights - see the illustration. Designed for batch processing - it's the programable tabulator that Babbage wanted.
These machines have appeared on "Doctor Who?" and several films.
For more see the ICT 1301 Resurrection Project website.
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