The past 50
years have seen plenty of changes in the technology industry with an amazing
progression in computing. When once your computer would be the size of a room,
projections say that handheld tablets will be the norm, even overtaking
laptops.
One such
computer who was around for the start of it all was Flossie: a giant machine
that’s looking like making quite the comeback. As an ICT 1301 model, the main
task was to produce test results for students at the University of London and
measuring at 5 tonnes, Flossie could not be more of a far cry from modern day
machines.
Flossie
would have benefitted from the use of cable harnessing due to the significant
amount of maintenance that had to go into keeping her ticking over.
Fascinatingly, due to the bulky size of the model, the ICT 1301 found stardom
after appearing in Doctor Who and James Bond.
The machine
was later discarded and studied by students before finding its way to a farm
owner who kindly donated the gigantic treasure.
Plans
are now in place to fix Flossie’s mechanisms that were sadly damaged during
transit by 2016. The idea is to house the enormous computer in The National
Museum of Computing – a team dedicated to preserving historic parts of
technology. Kevin Murrel, a trustee with the group said, "One
of the problems with computers as museum artefacts is that when they are
switched off they are fairly boring - it's fairly difficult to learn anything
from them," explained Mr Murrell.
"So ideally we want it switched
on, and once we've restored it we will be able to run the original software.”
An intriguing and passionate initiative, this
news says a lot about the evolution of computers and how it has grown from
humble beginnings to what it is now.Cable Harnessing at Lapp: http://www.cableharnessing.co.uk/home.htm
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