By the late 1960s, tech­nol­o­gists were already invent­ing the future we now inhab­it. Arthur C. Clarke peered into the future and saw a wired world where infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion would be imme­di­ate and bor­der­less. Mar­shall McLuhan fore­saw the rough out­lines of what we now call “social media.” And oth­ers pre­dict­ed that email and ecom­merce were on the not-so-dis­tant hori­zon. It should per­haps then come as no sur­prise that, just a few years lat­er, The Arti­fi­cial Lan­guage Lab­o­ra­to­ry at Michi­gan State devel­oped a way for the com­put­er to start doing some every­day com­merce — like order­ing piz­za.

In 1974 Don­ald Sher­man, whose speech was lim­it­ed by a neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der called Moe­bius Syn­drome, used a new-fan­gled device designed by John Eulen­berg to dial up a pizze­ria. The first call went to Domi­nos, which hung up. They were appar­ent­ly too busy becom­ing a behe­moth. Mer­ci­ful­ly, a humane pizze­ria — Mr. Mike’s — took the call, and his­to­ry was made. It all plays out above, and we hope that Mr. Mike’s is still thriv­ing all these years lat­er.…

via Coudal

The next time you feel frus­trat­ed with your aging per­son­al com­put­er, just watch the video above. In these fifty sec­onds, the Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing fires up the Har­well Deka­tron, also known as the Wolver­hamp­ton Instru­ment for Teach­ing Com­pu­ta­tion — or, nat­u­ral­ly, the WITCH. Hold­er of the title of the world’s old­est work­ing orig­i­nal dig­i­tal com­put­er, the WITCH, first built in 1951, went into retire­ment from Wolver­hamp­ton’s Stafford­shire Tech­ni­cal Col­lege in 1973. A three-year restora­tion of the com­put­er — all two-and-a-half tons, 828 flash­ing Deka­tron valves, and 480 relays of it — began in 2008. Now, hav­ing just fin­ished return­ing the machine to tip-top shape, they’ve actu­al­ly boot­ed it up, as you can see. “In 1951 the Har­well Deka­tron was one of per­haps a dozen com­put­ers in the world,” The Nation­al Muse­um of Com­put­ing’s press release quotes its trustee Kevin Mur­rell as say­ing, “and since then it has led a charmed life sur­viv­ing intact while its con­tem­po­raries were recy­cled or destroyed.”

The Har­well Atom­ic Ener­gy Research Estab­lish­ment pro­vid­ed the Deka­tron its first tasks, crank­ing out cal­cu­la­tions for­mer­ly done by hand. When it passed into obso­les­cence there in 1957, Stafford­shire Tech­ni­cal Col­lege took the mas­sive com­put­er off Har­well’s hands, and there it became the WITCH, used for teach­ing pur­pos­es over the next six­teen years. When it out­lived even its edu­ca­tion­al use, the WITCH went on dis­play at the Birm­ing­ham Muse­um of Sci­ence and Indus­try, and final­ly to dis­man­tle­ment and stor­age. Now it offers a whirring, clat­ter­ing, flash­ing, retro-tech­no­log­i­cal spec­ta­cle to new gen­er­a­tions of com­put­er enthu­si­asts. Some of them may be shocked to learn that, by virtue of sheer age, it does­n’t adhere to some of the very qual­i­ties of dig­i­tal com­put­ing they take for grant­ed: it does­n’t cal­cu­late in bina­ry code, but dec­i­mal code, hence the name “Deka­tron.” Though its prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions would seem lim­it­ed in the mod­ern world, rest assured that some young hob­by­ist is even now pon­der­ing how to get the thing onto the web.

h/t: Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Short His­to­ry of Roman­ian Com­put­ing: From 1961 to 1989

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.