10 Sep
2004
10 Sep
'04
5:55 p.m.
Incidentally, it always impresses me how many
clock museums keep their
exhibits running (in most cases about 70% of the clocks are still running
in my experience). And they're not faked!
Yep, I always places like that. I'm not sure why the parallel doesn't
happen for computer collections (I mean, sure, we get an awful lot of broken donations, but even so)
Yes, but consider the Salisbury clock (the oldest mechanical clock in
England, if not the world). It was found about 70 years ago up the
catherdral tower, with many bits missing (it had been conveted from
foliot balance to pendulum at some time around 1700, but not all of that
conversion was there either). It has now been restored and is running
again, with the foliot. Obviously quite a few parts are replacements
(they're slightly green in colour so you can tell which bits are not
original if you look closely), but equally quite a few parts are original
(and around 700 years old).
Now restoring that took a long time (10s of years IIRC), and I guess
you'd not want to spend that amount of time on a classic computer. But
they don't seem to be too worried about further damage being done by
running it.
> There would be a second one of you (well. OK, not quite :-)) if BP had
> not done all it could to drive me mad. I am not talking about having to
[...]
Actually on that front it's not so bad as it was
when you were there -
Sorry, I've had my fill of BP, enough to last me a lifetime...
-tony