Amazing computer can store 90 numbers!

I thought this might have been the one my Dad learnt computers on at uni but I just called him and turns out his first was the Stantec, a few years later:

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Standard/Stantec.Zebra.1961.102646082.pdf

That was still punched tape. Which prompted him at the dawn of the 80s, in the early stirrings of a realistic home pc concept to buy the computer that I first cut my teeth on - the ZX81...1 KB of memory!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81

I would have been second or third grade, one of the only kids in school with a computer and no, it wasn't cool. Had to learn to program because it had no software and used a rather innovative variation of BASIC. At some point someone published a book of programs you had to type in, which expanded my power with PEEK and POKE! Later I was able to adapt some Commodore 64 programs out of books into 1/16th the memory with some success.

I was disappointed at first because I wanted a Commodore VIC-20 like my professional programmer uncle (it had peripheral paddles and a brick breaking game I was addicted to) but I grew to love that little black box. Even managed to write a decent brick breaking clone, as good as anything on Intellivision. I think the folks still have it in the attic. I eventually got my C64, then later an Amstrad CPC464 with built-in tape-deck(!). At high school they had BBC Micros and I got exposed to the Macintosh, I was impressed with the 3.5in floppy, windows and form factor. The only Mac I ever liked.

Shortly after my first job bought my uncle's PC-XT when he upgraded (with Microprose F-15 Strike Eagle II yay! And Time Bandit, double yay!), my first step on the Microsoft/IBM journey featuring my first floppy disk drive (5.25in), first modem (2.4K). atdt anyone? I communicated with my first Americans on ShadowBBS on that PC, including my first and only almost online fling with 'Bjorkgirl' of Wisconsin in 1995. And downloaded low-res EGA 16 colour (not 16-bit) porn one frustrating line at a time, experience with C64 tape loading screens did not make it any easier!

Whoa, this thread seems to have triggered a rather divergent trip down memory lane! Still, I wrote it, I'm posting it.

Back to the Harwell Dekatron, I do a lot work in major telephone exchanges and there's still a fair bit of click-clacky activity going on in similar sized racks systems in there but there's significantly more than 90 calculations and switching operations going on at many times a second. A fondness for such old computer technology (particularly from old scifi films where boffins walked around inside computers took up whole floors) actually played a large part in me taking the job. Such fondness does not however translate to wanting to do real work on one of these old contraptions!

On a side note, my Dad disputes that the Harwell computer is in fact the oldest working computer. He is convinced that he saw the Manchester Mark 1 in working order at the computer museum on his last trip back to the UK. A quick web search seems to verify that it's older. Maybe it broke since or maybe there's a particular definition to 'working' or 'computer' because while I can believe CNN could get their facts wrong, I'm fairly certain that the Guiness book of world records would do their homework. And also that the custodians of the Manchester Mark 1 would cry blue murder if they had been overlooked because nerds have to cling desperately to what little respect they have. Can anyone confirm or deny?
 
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