Bottlehead Forum

General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Natural Sound on April 21, 2014, 10:45:26 AM

Title: Thermionic computing
Post by: Natural Sound on April 21, 2014, 10:45:26 AM

The wife and I have been watching "The Bletchley Circle" on PBS. The characters in the program are based on 4 women who were code breakers in England during WWII. The technology of the time sparked my interest so I decided to look into it a little further. If you are interested there is a fairly detailed Wiki here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park)

Here are a couple of photos of the decipher machines they used. Just think, the computer power they used at the time was much less powerful then your cell/mobile phone. But they had tubes so they were cool err... well... maybe not so cool. ;)

(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apprendre-en-ligne.net%2Fcrypto%2FEnigma%2Fbombe.jpg&hash=6cdf3230df1c06edd094d1f60581a3754acebd6a)
 
(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.descubridores.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F06%2FColossus_Mark2_Bletchley_Park-736x600.jpg&hash=eaac6be05bbce1848d9c2483ce4f2ce65e08ad17)

(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm4.staticflickr.com%2F3077%2F3240102420_2a41441bd5_z.jpg&hash=fbabc915d058c7aa405a538dd68323639cc9a11e)

(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm3.staticflickr.com%2F2653%2F3894648406_1524ac85ba_z.jpg&hash=253399e1dc8d7b599fc9ebf5b863353b06fa5055)

Title: Re: Thermionic computing
Post by: Tickwomp on April 21, 2014, 02:37:07 PM

Very cool stuff at Bletchley Park.  I had the honor of a semi private tour of "Colossus" soon after it was restored by Tony Sales.  Very distinctive smell too.  Reminded me of an old Strowger or Automatic Electric step by step telephone switches. 

Title: Re: Thermionic computing
Post by: Chris on April 21, 2014, 08:16:12 PM

Yes, we are all familiar with Bletchley  Park and the advent of the computer age at that time... Pretty awesome amount of tubes/valves.. Imagine the heat dissipation.. Good thing English weather is "mild".....

Title: Re: Thermionic computing
Post by: Chris on April 22, 2014, 07:53:18 PM

Perhaps this could inspire Paul to design a Bottlehead "Bletchley' Reference amp for us sporting 938 tubes....

Title: Re: Thermionic computing
Post by: Grainger49 on April 23, 2014, 07:41:16 AM

I always imagined the RCA Spectra 7072 I typed away on in 1970 looked like this behind the wall.  It probably was solid state after all.