[COFF] Mercury delay lines

[COFF] Mercury delay lines

[dave]

ABC-TV "Grantchester" (a detective-priest series[*]) featured someone who 
died from mercury poisoning, when someone opened the tanks.  Apart from 
the beautiful Teletype in the foreground, there was a machine with lots of 
dials in the background; obviously some early computer, but not enough 
footage for me to tell which one, but is a British show if that helps.

[*]
I suppose that I need not remind any Monty Python freaks of these lines:

"There's another dead bishop on the landing, Vicar-Sergeant!"
"Err, Detective-Parsons, Madam."

Etc...  Otherwise I'd go on all day :-)

-- Dave

[COFF] Mercury delay lines

[ats]

Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> writes:

> Apart from the beautiful Teletype in the foreground, there was a
> machine with lots of dials in the background; obviously some early
> computer, but not enough footage for me to tell which one,

There are some shots in this trailer:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JQmO2fC00E

The racks are mockups (there's a nice National HRO radio in the middle
of one!), but I think what they're trying to represent is the EDSAC
computer at Cambridge; the noughts and crosses game pictured ran on
EDSAC.

-- 
Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org>                         <http://offog.org/>

[COFF] Mercury delay lines

[dot]

Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> wrote:
> Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> writes:
>
> > Apart from the beautiful Teletype in the foreground, there was a
> > machine with lots of dials in the background; obviously some early
> > computer, but not enough footage for me to tell which one,
>
> There are some shots in this trailer:
>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JQmO2fC00E
>
> The racks are mockups (there's a nice National HRO radio in the middle
> of one!), but I think what they're trying to represent is the EDSAC
> computer at Cambridge; the noughts and crosses game pictured ran on
> EDSAC.

A picture of Wilkes with some mercury delay lines and a corner of an EDSAC
rack.

https://images.computerhistory.org/revonline/images/500004368-03-01.jpg?w=600

There was a lot of loose mercury kicking around on that site. Some of the
Victorian lecture theatres I attended as an undergrad were later
refurbished for use by another department and the rumours were that they
discovered there had been a lot of spillage from old physics
demonstrations when they were part of the Cavendish laboratory.

More recently (10ish years ago?) my boss was briefly evicted from his
office in the Phoenix building after they discovered mercury under the
floorboards. The building was not named after the IBM mainframe computer,
but because it had been burned down and rebuilt such that the top two
storeys looked quite different from the bottom two.

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
Biscay: West or southwest 4 to 6. Moderate, occasionally slight in north.
Thundery showers. Good, occasionally poor.

[COFF] Mercury delay lines

[grog]

On Monday, 15 June 2020 at 17:38:18 +0100, Tony Finch wrote:
> Adam Sampson <ats at offog.org> wrote:
>> Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> writes:
>>
>>> Apart from the beautiful Teletype in the foreground, there was a
>>> machine with lots of dials in the background; obviously some early
>>> computer, but not enough footage for me to tell which one,
>>
>> There are some shots in this trailer:
>>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JQmO2fC00E
>>
>> The racks are mockups (there's a nice National HRO radio in the middle
>> of one!), but I think what they're trying to represent is the EDSAC
>> computer at Cambridge; the noughts and crosses game pictured ran on
>> EDSAC.
>
> A picture of Wilkes with some mercury delay lines and a corner of an EDSAC
> rack.
>
> https://images.computerhistory.org/revonline/images/500004368-03-01.jpg?w=600

That looks very much like the delay lines on CSIRAC, the oldest
Australian computer, currently on display at Scienceworks in
Melbourne.  I have a number of photos of the machine at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/photos/Photos.php?dirdate=20040904 , and
there's a delay line at
http://www.lemis.com/grog/Photos/20040904/big/Delay-line-1.jpeg

CSIRAC was built in 1949.  If you're in Melbourne, it's well worth
looking at.

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 163 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/coff/attachments/20200616/a5c9bffc/attachment.sig>