Check out the website: http://www.tnmoc.org/
I was half excited and half concerned over my trip to the National Museum of Computing. While I love electronics, I found their history rather dull, and I did not know whether this tour would be one or the other. Thankfully, it was half-and-half.
That is not to say I do not enjoy hearing about accomplishments such as Alan Turing, Tommy Flowers, and Tutte. Their accomplishments, especially the diagram produced by Tutte in figuring out how the Lorenz machine worked, does show that the human brain is a far more better computer than any we have built so far, it is still enigmatic, and these computers we have built are the closest we can use to see how logic and computing would work in our head.
I am far more excited to learn the engineering and computational aspects of the museum compared to the history, much like how I prefer reading a book set in Victorian times rather than study the Victorian era. That is to say, I am quite disappointed by our time constraint. Still, I applaud Mr. Williams, our guide, in trying to explain both the humanity and science of these machines. Because of the constraint, Mr. Williams briefly went over the logical aspects of the machines and how they functioned, so I was not able to grasp how these machines completely worked and only knew the aftermaths of say the WITCH, Lorenz and Enigma Machine, Bombe, and Colossus.
My favorite part of the tour was the speed-run of the evolution of machines through their models. Ranging from hulking landmasses and calculators the size of an arm, we eventually reached personal computers. I will admit, I would have rather spent a day in their game room, with seemingly an evolution of gaming consoles. And embarrassingly, I knew how to work these old computers and newer models much better than I would with a modern TV.
No comments:
Post a Comment