50-year-old Flossie computer to be resurrected

British IT experts have launched an effort to reboot Flossie, one of the oldest surviving mass- produced computers after rescuing it from the scrapheap for the third time in its 50-year history.
The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) has taken delivery of what it believes is the last ICT 1301 computer to ever have a chance of working again.
The machine - known as Flossie - had originally been used to produce exam results for students at the University of London.
The huge machine, weighing 5.5 tonnes and with a footprint of about 6 metres by 7 metres, arrived in three container lorries at TNMOC's new storage facility in Milton Keynes.

The museum hopes to put it on display by 2016, TNMOC said in a press release.
One of its trustees said Flossie was one of the first computers specifically designed for use by UK businesses rather than scientific institutions.

ICT 1301s came with a punch card reader and printer built in to their body, which were used to enter and save data by means of creating a series of holes in a piece of stiff paper.
"For medium-sized companies that wanted to computerise their invoicing, their accounting or their payroll, this gave them the help to do that," Kevin Murrell, TNMOC Trustee said.

The University of London bought its machine in the 1960s and used it for accounting and administration tasks in addition to generating GCE examination results for students.
It was decommissioned in 1972 and was later sold at scrap metal value to a group of students before eventually ending up at a farm in Kent, whose owner donated the machine to the museum.
"Last year, Flossie was again at risk of being scrapped, but thanks to The National Museum of Computing the machine is safe again," Rod Brown, custodian of Flossie for the past decade, said.
"We look forward to the day that it can go back on display," Brown added.

Other editions of the machine were later used as props thanks to their arresting design. Doctor Who, the Pink Panther and the James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun all featured ICT 1301s.
Over the years more than 150 copies of the computer were created, but the charity said it was only aware of three others being left in existence, all of which are beyond repair.
"One of the problems with computers as museum artifacts is that when they are switched off they are fairly boring - it's fairly difficult to learn anything from them," Murrell said.
"So ideally we want it switched on, and once we've restored it we will be able to run the original software.

"We will have caused some damage in the move, so we need to deal with that, but I think in about three years' time we will have a properly demonstrable machine," he added.