part of a 6 ton computer from 1958 against a current 9 gram

A Twitter account shared two images with a startling comparison last Thursday and, bit by bit, it started to go viral: one of a piece of the Elliott 405, a computer developed in Norwich, eastern England, in 1958, against a Raspberry Pi Zero, one of the smallest and cheapest computers in existence today.

For starters, the amazing thing this time around is that this 1958 monster was just a piece of the computer, which consisted of 21 parts. Each weighed between 3 and 6 tonnes, depending on the components inside. Today, the Raspberry Pi Zero weighs 9 grams.

Therefore, 5 people try to lift the computer onto a truck. The Raspberry fits in a small pocket: it measures 65mmx30mm. Each Elliott cabinet measured 2mx77cm.

Second, the price: the Elliott costs around £ 85,000 ($ 117,500), today a Raspberry Pi costs around 3.60 pounds (5 dollars).

But if we get into the technical aspects, which have been shared by the blog www.spinellis.gr, more incredible data emerges. The Elliott had 16 KB memory, while the Raspberry has 512MB: 1 megabyte son 1,000 kilobytes.

The output bandwidth, that is, the image it could produce, was barely 25 characters, whereas today the Raspberry is managed in 1080p60, that is to say what we call Full HD at 60 frames per second.

But what was this computer and why is it all so amazing?

Elliott 405, the UK’s first “official” computer

“The Elliott-Automation company actively participated in the birth of thebritish information age“The Computer Conservatory Society explains on its website. It is considered the first company to put a computer into service in a British official body.

Elliott Brothers Ltd was one of the early 1950s and 1960s IT companies in the UK. Its origins are in the instruments: William Elliott He had founded a factory at the beginning of the 19th century, then they developed into research laboratories in 1945.

The company branched out into control systems and during WWII established a research laboratory in Borehamwood in Hertfordshire to do development work for the navy. It was here that his first computers were built, following his work on real-time digital control of naval weapons. The first Elliott 152 computer appeared in 1950.

“The City of Norwich and its Treasurer, Mr. AJ Barnard, have pioneered the application of information technology to the work of UK local authorities and businesses. In 1953-1954, Mr Barnard and his team began looking for an electronic system to manage their rates and payroll, ”explains the website of the Registrar’s office in Norfolk, a county in eastern England.

“Discussions with the Elliott brothers in London began in 1955 and the city council ordered the first Elliott 405 computer from them in January 1956. Handed over to Norwich City Council in February 1957 and became operational in April 1957. The event was celebrated with a demonstration of the machine in front of the Mayor of Norwich and the press on April 3, 1957 ”, the site archives reconstruct.

This is where the image comes from which these days has become viral on the networks: it is the door of the town hall.

“The first production machines were the 400 series, starting in 1955, and later Elliott developed the 800 series, the precursor to many global computer designs. The Elliott 405 was a general commercial machine with bulk storage of magnetic film and other functionalities designed for processing business data. Elliott Automation (as it would later become) merged with English Electric in 1967, and the following year its assets were acquired by GEC (General Electric Company Ltd), ”the site continues.

According to the register, which preserves the historical archives of Norfolk County, “the Norwich computer has generated a lot of interest across the UK and beyond. Mr Barnard was invited to present an article on the Norwich experiment to the British Computer Society in November 1957, a version of which was published in The Computer Journal in 1958 under the title ‘The first year with a commercial computer ‘», Reponen.

The comparison with the Raspberry Pi is not new, however. Launched in 2015, the minicomputer sparked this type of comment in the marketplace, as evidenced by a post on findery.com Perhaps because of its continued typing six years later, and because of the relentless advancement in technology, it went viral in 2021.

JB