WITCH (computer)
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WITCH (computer)
The Harwell computer, or Harwell Dekatron computer, later known as the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell (WITCH), is an early British computer of the 1950s based on valves and relays. From 2009 to 2012, it was restored at the National Museum of Computing. In 2013, for the second time, the ''Guinness Book of World Records'' recognised it as the world's oldest working digital computer, following its restoration. It previously held the title for several years until it was decommissioned in 1973. The museum uses the computer's visual, dekatron-based memory to teach schoolchildren about computers. Construction and use at Harwell The computer, which weighs , was built and used at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, Oxfordshire. Construction started in 1949, and the machine became operational in April 1951. It was handed over to the computing group in May 1952 and remained in use until 1957. It used dekatrons for volatile memory, similar to ...
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Atomic Energy Research Establishment
The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) was the main Headquarters, centre for nuclear power, atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from 1946 to the 1990s. It was created, owned and funded by the British Government. A number of early research reactors were built here starting with GLEEP in 1947 to provide the underlying science and technology behind the design and building of Britain's nuclear reactors such as the Windscale Piles and Calder Hall nuclear power station. To support this an extensive array of research and design laboratories were built to enable research into all aspects of nuclear reactor and fuel design, and the development of pilot plants for fuel reprocessing. The site became a major employer in the Oxford area. In the 1990s demand for government-led research had significantly decreased and the site was subsequently gradually diversified to allow private investment, and was known from 2006 as the Harwell Science and Innovati ...
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Ted Cooke-Yarborough
Edmund Harry Cooke-Yarborough (25 December 1918 – 10 January 2013) was the lead designer of the Harwell Dekatron, one of the world's early electronic computers and also a pioneer of radar. Life Ted Cooke-Yarborough was born at Campsall in the Yorkshire West Riding, northern England, the only child of barrister George Eustace Cooke-Yarborough (1876-1938), Magistrate (England and Wales), JP, of Campsmount, Yorkshire, and his wife Daphne Isabel (died 1984), daughter of Henry Cordy Wrinch. The Cooke-Yarborough family were a branch of the family of Cooke_baronets#Cooke_baronets,_of_Wheatley_Hall_(1661), Cooke baronets, of Wheatley Hall, Yorkshire. Cooke-Yarborough was educated at Canford School in Dorset, southern England, where he built his first wireless equipment, and studied Physics at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was president of the University of Oxford, University Physics Society. During World War II, he worked as part of the secret Air Ministry RDF radar project, initia ...
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Leicestershire Local Education Authority
Leicestershire ( ; postal abbreviation Leics.) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warwickshire to the south-west, Staffordshire to the west, and Derbyshire to the north-west. The border with most of Warwickshire is Watling Street, the modern A5 road (Great Britain), A5 road. Leicestershire takes its name from the city of Leicester located at its centre and unitary authority, administered separately from the rest of the county. The ceremonial county – the non-metropolitan county plus the city of Leicester – has a total population of just over 1 million (2016 estimate), more than half of which lives in the Leicester Urban Area. History Leicestershire was recorded in the Domesday Book in four wapentakes: Guthlaxton, Framland, Goscote, and Gartree (hundred), Gartree. These later became hundred ...
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John Yeadon
John David Yeadon (born 1948) is a British artist, and art educator. A practicing artist for over 50 years, he explored issues of politics, sexuality, food, national identity, the grotesque and carnival. In the 1980s his work was provocative with issues relating to male sexuality. An eclectic artist essentially a painter and printmaker, his work has included text, digital images, photography, and he has worked on banner making, theatre design and has collaborated with video artists. Yeadon's grandmother was the ventriloquist Annie Howarth, who worked under the stage name Josephine Langley. Recurring themes in his paintings since 2010 include his mother and grandmother’s ventriloquist dummies Yeadon's 1984 exhibition Dirty Tricks at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, was at the high point of AIDS paranoia and gay ‘blame’, Yeadon’s forthright, radical, critical, ‘in your face’ paintings challenged preconceptions on sexuality and society. These paradox ...
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Computer Conservation Society
The Computer Conservation Society (CCS) is a British organisation, founded in 1989. It is under the joint umbrella of the British Computer Society (BCS), the London Science Museum and the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. Overview The CCS is interested in the history of computing in general and the conservation and preservation of early British historical computers in particular. The society runs a series of monthly public lectures between September and May each year in both London and Manchester. The events are detailed on the society's website. The CCS publishes a quarterly journal, ''Resurrection''. The society celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2014. Dr Doron Swade, formerly the curator of the computing collection at the London Science Museum, was a founding committee member and is the current chair of the society. David Morriss, Rachel Burnett, and Roger Johnson are previous chairs, also all previous presidents of the BCS. Projects The society organises ...
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Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following 1883 for the financier and politician Sir Herbert Leon in the Victorian Gothic, Tudor, and Dutch Baroque styles, on the site of older buildings of the same name. During World War II, the estate housed the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powersmost importantly the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers. The GC&CS team of codebreakers included Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander, Bill Tutte, and Stuart Milner-Barry. The nature of the work at Bletchley remained secret until many years after the war. According to the official historian of British Intelligence, the "Ultra" intelligence produced at Bletchley shortened the war by two to four years, and without it th ...
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Harwell Dekatron Computer Front View
Harwell may refer to: People *Harwell (surname) *Harwell Hamilton Harris (1903–1990), American architect Places *Harwell, Nottinghamshire, England, a hamlet *Harwell, Oxfordshire, England, a village **RAF Harwell, a World War II RAF airfield, near Harwell village. **Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, the current official name of the former RAF Harwell site **Atomic Energy Research Establishment *Harwell Glacier, in Antarctica Other uses *Harwell-Boeing file format See also * *Hartwell (other) Hartwell may refer to: Places * Hartwell, Victoria, a neighbourhood of Camberwell in Melbourne, Australia ** Hartwell railway station England * Hartwell, Buckinghamshire * Hartwell, Northamptonshire, a village * Hartwell, Staffordshire, a loca ...
{{disambiguation, geo, given name ...
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Birmingham Museum Collection Centre
The Museum Collection Centre (MCC) in Nechells, Birmingham, England, is a building that holds 80% of Birmingham Museums Trust's stored collections under one roof. It is one of the UK's largest museum stores. Among the thousands of objects stored there are steam engines (many of which are from the former Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry), sculptures, a collection of Austin, Rover and MG motor cars, a red phone box and a Sinclair C5. It opens to the public monthly, or by arrangement. There are also other open days, which tend to take place during the Spring and Summer Bank Holidays. The Museum Collection Centre is also home to The Museum in a Box service which enables schools and community groups to borrow original artefacts. In September 2014 then-trainee curator Lukas Large uncovered a taxidermied specimen of the long-extinct North American passenger pigeon The passenger pigeon or wild pigeon (''Ectopistes migratorius'') is an extinct species of pigeon that wa ...
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Museum Of Science And Industry, Birmingham
Thinktank, Birmingham (formerly known as simply Thinktank) is a science museum in Birmingham, England. Opened in 2001, it is part of Birmingham Museums Trust and is located within the Millennium Point complex on Curzon Street, Digbeth. History The Birmingham Collection of Science & Industry was started in the mid-19th century, initially consisting of collections of weapons from the gun trade and the Birmingham Proof House. The Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery opened in 1885, including science collections. In 1951 the Museum of Science and Industry opened at Elkington Silver Electroplating Works, Newhall Street. Over the following years, the museum acquired individual artefacts, as well as entire collections, that were related to local industry and the history of science and technology. Birmingham City Council decided in 1995 to relocate the museum when it was given an opportunity by the Millennium Commission to construct a new building. The former museum closed in 1997, and ...
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Wolverhampton University
The University of Wolverhampton is a public university located on four campuses across the West Midlands, Shropshire and Staffordshire in England. The roots of the university lie in the Wolverhampton Tradesmen's and Mechanics' Institute founded in 1827 and the 19th-century growth of the Wolverhampton Free Library (1870), which developed technical, scientific, commercial and general classes. This merged in 1969 with the Municipal School of Art, originally founded in 1851, to form the Wolverhampton Polytechnic. The university has four faculties comprising eighteen schools and institutes. It has students and currently offers over 380 undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The city campus is located in Wolverhampton city centre, with a second campus at Walsall and a third in Telford. There is an additional fourth campus in Wolverhampton at the University of Wolverhampton Science Park. History Technical college The roots of the University of Wolverhampton lie in the Wolverhampt ...
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John Hammersley
John Michael Hammersley, (21 March 1920 – 2 May 2004) was a British mathematician best known for his foundational work in the theory of self-avoiding walks and percolation theory. Early life and education Hammersley was born in Helensburgh in Dunbartonshire, and educated at Sedbergh School. He started reading mathematics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge but was called up to join the Royal Artillery in 1941. During his time in the army he worked on ballistics. He graduated in mathematics in 1948. He never studied for a PhD but was awarded an ScD by Cambridge University and a DSc by Oxford University in 1959. Academic career With Jillian Beardwood and J.H. Halton, Hammersley is known for the Beardwood-Halton-Hammersley Theorem.  Published by the Cambridge Philosophical Society in a 1959 article entitled “The Shortest Path Through Many Points,” the theorem provides a practical solution to the “traveling salesman problem.” He held a number of positions, both in and outs ...
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The Mathematical Institute, University Of Oxford
The Mathematical Institute is the mathematics department at the University of Oxford in England. It is one of the nine departments of the university's Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division. The institute includes both pure and applied mathematics (Statistics is a separate department) and is one of the largest mathematics departments in the United Kingdom with about 200 academic staff. It was ranked (in a joint submission with Statistics) as the top mathematics department in the UK in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework. Research at the Mathematical Institute covers all branches of mathematical sciences ranging from, for example, algebra, number theory, and geometry to the application of mathematics to a wide range of fields including industry, finance, networks, and the brain. It has more than 850 undergraduates and 550 doctoral or masters students. The institute inhabits a purpose-built building between Somerville College and Green Templeton College on Woodstock ...
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