Speaker: Kevin Murrell
Venue: City of Bristol College
Please register for this event here.
7:00pm Refreshments, 7:30pm Main Talk
The recently restored Harwell Dekatron Computer is a typical project conducted by the Computer Conservation Society. Starting with the author’s vague memories of the machine being a museum display in the early 1970s, and a chance observation in 2006, the CCS began a project to find the remains of the computer and determine whether it might be restored.
A combination of luck, perseverance and vintage-technology know-how made the project possible, and this 1950s relay and valve computer has now been restored to full working order. It is now on public display and shown working, and is being used again in education with a new generation of programmers.
Kevin Murrell has been a member of the Computer Conservation Society for many years, initially as chair of the DEC working group and now as society secretary. Kevin divides his time between his own business supplying systems to the health service, acting as a trustee to The National Museum of Computing, and in his spare time, still tinkering with his collection of PDP8 mini-computers.
