[GeronL]

kind of cool that it still works

[BipolarBob]

Yeah, but does it run Windows 8® without a hitch?

[Crooked Constituent]

Interesting. Kinda neat to read about this from my smart phone.

[mylife]

Imagine the heat this thing produced!

[rockrr]

Makes my 28 year old Compaq Luggable a positive youngster by comparison.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

The Dekatron gas-filled tubes (similar to Nixies) this thing runs on fortunately consume very little power and are reasonably rugged and fail-resistant. 1500 watts is relatively nothing (though I will admit being skeptical of that low power figure) The early ENIAC and GENIAC computers which used thousands of vacuum tubes (with filaments that light up, vs gas-filled tubes) consumed astronomical amounts of power....and required techs with shopping carts filled with replacement tubes circling the things on a steady basis.

7500 6SN7's @ .6 amps filament current = 28.3 kw just to light up the filaments!

[Towed_Jumper]

This was actually IBM’s first attempt at building a laptop.

[GreyFriar]

I thought the first digital computer was the human brain linked to fingers and toes used to add things up.

Oh well, digits live forever, or until someone hits the delete button or wipes a magnet over the hard drive.

[No Truce With Kings]

Wonder how much power it drains? The old computers used so much electricity that you could hard-cook an egg at the heat exhaust.

When I was in college I had a job tending a mainframe that required a specially air-conditioned room or it would overheat — and that computer use semiconductors. The Harwell Dekatron that was restored used vacuum tubes and would generate even more heat.

Anything that puts a frown on a greenie’s face is a good thing as far as I am concerned.

[COBOL2Java]

A panorama view of the world's oldest original working digital computer at The National Museum of Computing. (Robert Dowell)