🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2756@client1.DRETOR.UUCP> m...@client1.dciem.dnd.ca (Martin Taylor) writes:
>The Ferut (Ferranti Mark 1) computer also used Williams tubes...
>The time of all this was summer of 1954 (maybe 53 or 55, but I think 54).

Speaking of the Ferut, there's J.N.P. Hume's account of how he broke the
Ferut...  ("The" Ferut because "Ferut" was "Ferranti at U of T" and there
was only one.)  From memory of hearing him tell it some years ago:

Seems the powerdown procedure for this thing was a bit elaborate, with a
posted instruction sheet giving ten steps.  One day he was finishing up,
late in the day, and came to power down the machine... and somebody had
added an eleventh step, in between two existing ones, handwritten and
not too intelligible.  He tried to comply... smell of smoke and unpleasant
noises.  He hastily finished the procedure and called Ferranti.  "Service
hours are 9 to 5, we'll be there tomorrow morning."  They show up next
morning, take a quick look at the situation, and start hauling access
covers off, tearing subassemblies apart, and so forth.  Hume sits in his
office all morning waiting for the bad news, with passersby in the hall
looking in pityingly:  here's the junior prof on a miniscule salary who
broke the multi-million-dollar machine...  Around noon, the head Ferranti
man comes into Hume's office, dumps a double handful of parts on his desk,
and says "that's it".  Little bits of damage everywhere, but nothing major
and no significant expense.  The kicker:  for months afterward, the machine
was much more reliable than before!  He'd stressed it just enough to burn
out all the marginal parts.
-- 
1755 EST, Dec 14, 1972:  human |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
exploration of space terminates| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry he...@zoo.toronto.edu