19 Dec
2005
19 Dec
'05
12:57 p.m.
Allison wrote:
That's what we like to hear! :)
Subject:
Oldest machine (was: Re: Good haul of old pc stuph)
From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 11:26:08 +0000
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
PDP-8F manufacture date 1973. Running! However will the owner of that nice looking PB250 step
up.. he's back around 1961.
Ahh, that's earlier than our Marconi TAC then (1963 IIRC, although designed in
the late 50's).
Not sure what we have that's earlier and qualifies. The Elliott 803 is late
1950's (1958 I think) but has a core fault so doesn't count as working until
someone finds the time to fix it! It's probably the earliest complete machine
that we have though; prior to that we just have small bits of some of the
earlier famous* machines.
*famous in the UK at least. I confess to being rather clueless as to what was
going on in the rest of the world between the late 1940's (post ENIAC) and
early 1970's. It seems that Japan certainly had a reasonably successful
computer development industry in the 1960's, but I've come across very little
documenting what was going on in the rest of the world during those years
(even in the US to be honest, other than knowing some of DEC's history)
cheers
Jules