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The WITCH (
Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell), a 61 year old computer was turned back on Tuesday in the UK. It became the world's oldest working computer, first constructed in the 1950's as a part of the atomic research program, weighing about 2.5 tons. The computer has no actual use anymore in modern life except for being on display in a museum for learning purposes. The WITCH has many lights that flash and clattering sounds from all over. The WITCH uses dekatrons instead of binary code like most computers. The contraption could only store 40 8-digit numbers and takes about 5-10 seconds to multiply 2 numbers. The WITCH also uses computer programs on paper tape and has no keyboard nor monitor. I think it is a great idea to revive the WITCH because people can see the oldest computer in the world and historians and other people with the same interests can see and learn about the origins of our devices.
Contracting woes may cause further delays for $19.4-billion ITER, a project designed to show the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a power source. The world's largest scientific project is threatened with further delays, as agencies struggle to complete the design and sign contracts worth hundred of millions of euros/dollars. ITER is a massive project to show that nuclear fusion can be used as a power source(for more). The device is a "doughnut shaped" reactor called a Tokamak, wrapped in superconducting magnets that squeeze and heat a plasma of hydrogen isotopes to the point of fusion. The result would be nothing ever done, the controlled release of 10 times more energy than consumed. ITER has been consuming mostly money and time. Since seven international partners signed up to the project in 2006, the price has roughly tripled to around €15 billion (US$19.4 billion), and the original date of completion has been moved to 2020. I have no opinion on the matter because this is alot of money going into a project that may or may not pay out.
