1958 FACOM 128B Japanese Relay Computer, still working!
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- 0:00 Intro
0:53 The FACOM 128B
1:53 History of relay computers
5:16 Trip to Mt Fuji and Fujitsu's Numazu plant
6:12 Detailed look at the FACOM 128B
10:33 Simple example: 3+3, deciphering the lights
12:49 Calculating square root of 2
13:44 Crossbar mechanical memory
17:07 Large calculation demo
21:30 Maintenance
22:34 FACOM and the rise of Fujitsu
23:16 More footage of the 128B in action
This FACOM 128B was designed in 1958 and built in 1959, and is part of Fujitsu's (and Japan's) first commercial computers series. It uses over 5,000 relays, and still works to this day! Samtec and Fujitsu arranged for me to see this very special machine in action during a recent visit to Japan.
Many thanks to Fujitsu:
Mayumi Funamura
Yoshio Takahashi
Tadao Hamada
and Samtec:
Yasuo Sasaki
Brian Vicich
for making the visit possible.
Special thanks to
Robert Woodhead
for providing precious technical information.
Some relevant links:
Outstanding CHM video on the early machines mentioned here: • Computer Pioneers: Pio...
Nice list of amateur relay computer projects: hackaday.io/project/11798-rel...
Viewer @aljawad solves the same problem on a HP-15C pocket calculator from 25 years later: • Hewlett Packard HP-15c...
Our sponsor for PCBs: www.pcbway.com
Support the team on Patreon: / curiousmarc
Merch on Teespring: teespring.com/stores/curiousm...
Learn more on companion site: www.curiousmarc.com
Contact info: czcams.com/users/curiousmarca... - Věda a technologie
1:27 that's my grandfather working on the ENIAC in 1950. He remembers them having him pose for that photo. He started out as one of the tube technicians in 1949-1950 but by 1952 he was in charge of all the maintenance on the ENIAC
You are lucky to have a man like him in your family. It's a great photo of history.
That's awesome.
This is so cool.
That's the most famous photo of an ENIAC
@@manamsetty2664 it’s one of the more famous photos yes. But that’s him, my family is sure of it and so was he
Thank you for relaying this information.
XD
Badum tsst
GOOD 1
Hahaha
😁
I love the lines of this machine. Clean, sparse, modular, pure craftsmanship all the way down to the little labels on every component of the memory crossbars.
I visited this factory 30 years ago and remain truly amazed that the original demo is still in great shape
Man: "Computer, what's 3 + 3 ?"
FACOM: "5 + 1"
Man: "Uh, thanks... I guess."
A common core answer, way before its time.
Underrated comment.
3+3? 10-4
:)
And it only cost $35.00 in electricity
It takes sqrt(2) seconds to calculate sqrt(2)...
I wish they would have squared the result again, to see how accurate it is...
Yeah I think the uploader intended it as a joke
Not seconds... with optimisations it could take fractions of a second by doing it in a relay cascade of about 3 full cycles or about 1/10 of a second.
I say this because the fastest permanent switching relays could be switched at 30Hz.
Other kinds of relays like pulse relays can be switched much faster (kilohertz range)... but that’s the limit of what you can do with mechanical parts.
Still, slow as fuck.
You are on to something...
On^n2 ;)
This is why I love Japan. Not only do they have this machine on display, but it is in perfect working order and they have people dedicated to maintaining it and demonstrating it to its fullest. I don't think there's any other country in the world that preserves it's history as well as Japan.
You love nanjing massacre too i guess..
Tons of other countries preserve their history lol what are you talking about 😅
we litterally have a working version of the first digital computer in the uk bruh
Ok weeb
Never been on the Smithsonian?
@@poiu477 Your hedonistic delusions are what brings downfall on various societies these days
Back in the early 70s, I was a technician working in the Toronto Stock Exchange. There was a computer that was installed a year before I was born. It used both vacuum tubes and relays. It used a code called "excess 6", to make decimal counters. The value of the counter was 6 higher than the data. The reason for this was to simplify decoding "10". At that point, the counter would roll over, producing a carry and also resetting the counter to 6, which represented 0. A normal counter would require extra logic to detect when 10 was reached, so they went with excess 6. It also had a memory drum.
So really these are more like calculators right?
@@RT-qd8yl Not so much a calculator. It's purpose was to transmit stock prices to broker's offices. There were several trading posts on the the trading floor, where post boys would receive the bids and offers from the floor traders. They were also on the phone to some operators downstairs who would enter the prices on a keyboard that caused the post indicators to spin to the prices. That system I worked on would take the stock info and send it to boards in the broker's offices where the indicators would also spin. Later on, a connection was made to a Ferranti Packard 6000 computer for a stock inquiry system.
This is an EXCELLENT video. No background music (thank you, thank you, thank you), plenty of photos and videos, well written, well researched, and the author, albeit present and distinct, is not the focus point. It's wonderful example. I wish there were more people creating videos like this. Thank you.
I agree. Excellent video. They referenced and compared to the vintage telephone exchanges called crossbars. I am blessed with childhood memories of the "Number five crossbar" that my dad maintained for a living. Very impressive '50s technology. The "Connections Museum" has in it's collection the very last working number five crossbar in the world. A CZcams search will turn up some some great videos of this wonderful piece of history.
Yeaaaa!!!
Missed so many good videos because of background music
I agree. The videos very well made. I don't think BG music is bad, but the generic trash CZcams has is. If people paid for good music, it would be a lot less annoying since you wouldn't hear the same trash all the time.
@@woodworkerroyer8497 the real annoying part is when it is mixed super low so you can barely make it out.
As someone who got a chance to see this machine earlier this year (and on a maintenance day, so I met the full team dedicated to keeping this machine alive), I can state with authority that seeing this device in operation should be on the bucket list of every lover of computing history. It not only features a bunch of clever innovations that made it more powerful, but it has a visceral impact that is similar to that which you get when seeing the Difference Engine in operation.
Robert, I must also thank you very much for providing me with your technical analysis derived from the Japanese documents. I need to add your name to the credits!
Oh shit! It's the Animeigo guy!
Is amazing... Thats for sure.
Only in japan...
Good for these, japan. 👍
Robert Woodhead What a fabulous experience.
Sure it's fancy, but can it run Wizardry? :-)
I have always been impressed at the level of pride and meticulousness that Japanese engineers take in their work. Everything is precise and choreographed... down to the tool set!
Everything looks so orderly too.
That's the difference between the Japanese culture of feeling that working for a corporation is a great honor vs. the American culture of feeling that working for a corporation means you're being "exploited".
i too love the japanese craftsmanship. if you laid out a bunch of items from a particular category, removed the branding, and made sure you selected from across the companies that make that item i'm very likely to pick up the japenese one and say "i'll take this one"
@@SergeantExtreme Japanese corporations also make a big deal out of telling their employees how they fit into the greater whole and what happens to what they do once it passes on to something else. That way everyone knows what's happening at all times anywhere in the company, unlike the western culture where you often have no idea what they're doing on the other side of the wall. It also means everyone in a Japanese company knows exactly how many people have to wait for them if they screw up or call in sick
@@SergeantExtreme if exploitation is honour by Japanese standards, then the Japanese have been brainwashed well.
The passion and dedication of a restorer, the effort of those people who funded it, just to preserve and maintain a piece of history in a good condition. A glimpse and part of history.
What a beautiful machine. It took lots of love to restore that for sure!
Hey Fran ! Small internet isn't it ? How much do you love this ... right >
Pretty small world indeed
12:25 - sounds like a ship engine idling!!!! Amazing machine. Great video, thanks for posting. How far we have come with technology....
that love its called money :D
OMG HI fran
so the japanese did spend time and money on preserving the history of their industrial legacy. Something we should definitly learn about.
Ever heard of the Computer History Museum?
They have photos atleast
The oldest working digital computer is a UK one - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harwell_computer - czcams.com/video/YvPN8rU3tMs/video.html
I saw a video a month ago of a guy restoring the landing computer of the Apollo program. How did he came across such an important piece of American aeronautical history?
Why, NASA dumped it and a lot of other mission equipment on a warehouse. As trash they were auctioning to salvagers and space buffs.
@@glidershower
Yep. That was a good video .
Apparently another AGC came up for auction.. they tried to bid on it
It sold for $250,000. I think they said.
I once did some work in the penthouse of an old relay driven elevator. Hearing the relay's click and clack while the logic was determined to open and close doors, turn on floor lights , and ding the bells really was something I will always remember - I can only imagine what it must be like to hear all those relays in person. Very cool
Preserving our past will help ensure our future, what a beautiful piece of machinery.
12:25 - The clock speed on that CPU sounds like all of 2.5 Hz!
An era when people can hear the CPU clock speed.
@@shao1423 You can actually hear some modern processors work, too, due to their constant frequency changes. Intel's 6th generation Core processors, codenamed Skylake, were so noisy that Apple decided not to built them into their laptops.
@@boden_staendig never knew that! Wouldn’t that be caused by the EMI to the audio signal? Since the MB on modern NB are so tiny.
@@shao1423 It's coil whine.
2.5 times the speed of the Dr. Konrad Zuse's relay computers from two decades earlier. Such is progress. 😉
Skip ahead? I don't think you understand why I watch these videos...
i could watch an hour easy from the host
Agreed ! Love this !!!
Aye, ASMR for nerds !
The beautiful sounds of electronic yes’s and no’s 🤤🤤
I feel you brother.
Its fascinating
大きいマシンが頑張って計算してるのいいですね
I'm a telecommunications technician and I remember the cross-bar telephone exchanges as they were still in use in many locations 25 years ago here in Australia. The sound of them making and breaking connections was really quite hypnotic. They would travel in waves from one side of the switch bank to the other. It was only a matter of a few years though, before they were replaced by System 12 and AXE digital exchanges, ending the era of electromechanical switching telephone exchanges. Seeing videos like this one brings back a lot of memories. Thanks for this little trip down memory lane.
When my father was working for Fujitsu a few years ago, he took me to the Numazu complex to see this mainframe (and another that I can't remember the name of), and they fired it up for us - they even let me keep a printout.
He also worked for Fujitsu in the mid to late 80's, then called FACOM here in Australia, as a mainframe operator and eventually worked his way up to several managerial roles and was one of the first foreign transfers to Fujitsu's head office in Tokyo. Not only were the machines IBM compatible, they were almost identical clones with remnants of IBM code which got Fujitsu into trouble later on. He told me that most operators kept an IBM manual in their car that they would use for error troubleshooting because the Fujitsu manual wasn't as good, but they weren't allowed to bring them into the building!
Thanks for making this video, it was fun learning about relay computers. :)
@DeChief. Do you still have that printout?
Damn you should've got some. Lovin' from the uploader of this video. That's a lot of insightful information.
Aaron Greenfield yup! It's rolled up in a tube somewhere, I was considering framing it.
I had no idea we had FACOM in Australia! Interesting!
I'd like to see an attempt to divide by zero.
That will burn up about halve the relays
I just asked Fujitsu what would happen and they said: “Divide by 0: 128B detects divide-by-zero. It stops and turns \infty lamp on.” Which is the correct answer, approved by the IEEE standard from many years later!
My first thought also ...Divide by zero ... I used to do that to my Dad's huge desktop mechanical calculator 55 years ago. It banged, clacking up a storm, while it's top part shifted back and forth, lifted up and down, numbers rolling over and over, shaking his desk forever till infinity...There's your result !
It will kick you in the leg )
It will probably catch on fire
When computer is older than all the people in the room...
And still not retired.
When I am that old, I hope I can have cadre of people to look after me and have people visit me from all over the world.
And have important things to do.
Nobody will care that I am slow because I'm one of the kind. ;)
That happens when my toddler is using my old iPad in his room.
I work on power generating station, that older even than my dad
Only because I wasn't there.
What a surprise!!... I worked 30 years ago as a technician for the latest crossbar systems operative in the first telephone company in Spain and I had no idea that this tecnology was used in computing... I knew that tubes and relays had been used until the introduction of transistors, but not in such a familiar way to me... Amazing...
Only have to replace about one relay a year despite being demo'ed daily? damn that's very good reliability. I guess this and lower power draw were the few clear advantage over Valves/Tubes in these early days
Yeah. Electromechanical hardware is darn reliable, having a burn coil is extremely rare and everything needed to make it run is contact adjustments.
Contacts are made to have a slight "sweeping" motion, thus are self cleaning.
I do collect (and restore) pinball machines, and EM ones are easily the most reliable and easy to fix.
Tommy Flowers proved that you could use tubes during WWII more reliably than relays but ONLY if you never shut them off! That's a lot of power to draw, but the advantage is speed. This was used in the Colossus to break teletype encryption (not Enigma, but Lorenz).
Z3 enhanced reliability by turning off current during switching to avoid arcing the contacts. I wonder if the 128B did something like this?
Yeah thats called made in japan. To this day made in japan stuff is better and reliable. I have 30 years made in japan hi-fi, still going strong and flawless. Made in china era was the worst that could affect us, but money is WHAT counts unfortunately
@@jhallenworld I was wondering that too. If one used latching relays operated by a two-phase clock, one could avoid ever having any relay switch on or off while under load. It would be interesting to have a bit more explanation of how some parts of this computer were implemented. While 4,000 relays in some ways seems big and in some ways small, I would guess that that's probably equivalent to tens of thousands of transistors, since many relays would probably have multiple poles.
Japanese are Master Craftsman, they always take pride in their work! I have always admired the quality in Japanese products!
Weeb
Yeah made in japan stuff is Real quality. I have 30 years old made in japan stereo, still going
Remember when there were used to products with "MADE IN JAPAN" 😢.
@@NoNoseProduction Same i have a Panasonic record player and flip clock from 1973 and 1976 that still work, i just grease the motor on the flip clock occasionally.
made in China
On my way from school in the 70s and 80s, I loved walking by my small towns phone relay building. As I raided the garbage for wire, old bell sets, etc, I could hear the clicking and moving of the old style relay systems as someone dialed their number. It was built on the same land as the original switch board operators home back in the pre dial days.
5:53 I like how he adds the Japanese “Eto” in the middle of his English.
I thought he was tossing in some Russian for flair.
Very impressive that such a behemoth was preserved so lovingly.
I want to say it’s typical of Japan, but it is actually surprisingly common to see these early one offs in good shape and complete.
The first couple of decades must have been the hardest to convince management of the importance of keeping it.
It is in beautiful condition, marvelous !
This is Japan we're talking about. The management weren't some sharks hired from outside, but men who had started in the company out of college and stayed with the company their entire lives. This is a machine they would introduced to in their orientation, grown up with, have been proud of, and felt responsible for taking care of it as not only a legacy of their company but the country as well.
NYCZ31 even the Japanese with all their reverence for history and tradition can be surprisingly and seemingly randomly and stupidly pragmatic about what to preserve and what to throw away.
3+3 = 1+5 confirmed
Now have it do 1+5
1 + 5 = 1 + 5
This must be where Common Core math came from
I'm pretty sure it's 2+4, actually...
Its still the most amazing computer I've ever seen keep in mind its doing everything mechanically skip ahead no way!!!! Please forward our thanks and respect for the demonstration from Canada.
"Biquinary" - I really learned something new there. And I've been dabbling with computers since the 1970s. Thank you Marc.
When I was a kid I used to work on relay based pinball machines from the 50's and 60's, that had some of the building blocks like adders and multipliers in them, and it I thought those were amazing and clever. I always wondered if there was such a thing as a full-scale relay based computer, so I can wonder no more. This video was the coolest thing in the way of computing I have ever seen! Thank you so much for capturing it in action and presenting it to us. I absolutely was mesmerized by it! :)
Marc: Darling, let's make a trip to your home country!
Japanese Wife: Yay!
Marc: I have arranged a special visit to this vintage computer....
Gotta admit that while Mrs. CuriousMarc looks a bit bored in this video, she is a very pretty woman!
She's actually from North Korea. He said she reacted badly to seeing the mini Soviet flag next to the Soyuz clock because of the fact that she'd escaped from communism and that her family is detained in labour camps.
@eddiehimself She is from Vietnam actually. Boat people refugee.
@@CuriousMarc you good man with good heart also. merry christmas and happy new 2021 year for both, You and Your wife!!
This is the content I want to watch on youtube! Love to see how these machines still spark a curiosit and happines in those people that work there. You can see they are loving it!
I love relay computers, the sound of them really let's you capture the somewhat regular patterns within a more unpredictable song of computation.
16:53 Again those japanese dates, which count in the years of their respective majesty, so probably Shōwa 34.
Thanks, you are right! I was wondering where he saw that date! You can look it up here: www.ewc.co.jp/Pages/Information/CalendarEN.aspx. It actually translates to 1959. Close enough.
A few month back I found out about this computer and quickly discovered that most written information about it was in japanese. I also could not really find proper photos to see how it looks like.
Thank you so much for making this video. It's truly an impressive machine.
The sound that this machine makes in operation - it's beautiful in my ears. Solving that matrix is just magic, when you think about the fact that it was mechanical moving parts that did this work. Thanks for showing this, Marc! I regret the fact that I didn't know about this when I was in Japan.
That was awesome! As a sci-fi writer, this video was pure red meat!
It’s gold to a causal watcher like me
It tackles linear equations easily!
This is so impressive, I love the sound it makes while running the program. I'm really glad you kept the footage of the complete calculation.
100% agree.
My shaver made in Japan. I'm shaving every day for 2 minutes already 7 years and it's still working perfectly fine.
MrBorysPBG what brand?
MrBorysPBG So you shaved for 3 days, 15 hours and 12 minutes total.
Utterly fantastic to see it calculating... its like standing inside a microprocessor. All kids should see this!
Absolutely marvelous the concept, the complexity and the well preserved this computer is.
LED表示なのでこの分野ではまだ新しい機械です
That was so cool to watch!! I've never seen a real relay-based computer in action before.
You know, the term "debugging" actually dates back to this era of relay-powered computers. Bugs would get sucked in because of all the air that had to be moved rapidly through the computer to keep it cool, and the bugs would get stuck in the relays' contacts, thus preventing them from working correctly. So "debugging" meant removing literal bugs from the relay contacts, to keep the computers running smoothly. The term stuck around all the way until today, even though it means something different.
That is actually cool to know. I've always wondered how literal it is
that is a myth, bug as something that bothers u was used already
however there was one time a bug got stuck but ppl made a pun based on the existing term 'first time a 'bug' has actually been found!'
Absolutely gorgeous. A fine testament to Japanese attention to detail and craftsmanship.
This makes sense as to why every retro space movie had boards and boards of blinking lights.
Also.. I have always wanted to make those blinking light panels for my shed.
This whole video was awesome. Thank You.
Things like this NEED to be saved and recorded in this way. This is the very definition of the power of the human mind and our ability to achieve anything we set our mind to. I am simply astonished at the scale and ability of these machines. On top of that, every old sci fi show worth its salt had computers modeled after these inventions. You can SEE a console lifted straight out of one of these machine on the bridge of the Enterprise and it would fit right in!
as a child I was living next to a box containing an automated telephone switch. When standing next to it you could memorize/calculate/count all numbers dialed (from the city block) just by listening to the relais clicking.
Who did you end up calling?
@@alphaforce6998 999
Not 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 ?
@@8bitwiz_ Nice IT skills there :)
There's a very odd satisfaction to hearing all those relays clicking away
Having spent a long career maintaining various types of telephone exchanges, including the crossbar types this technology was based on, I can assure you it's not that pleasant - I now have to wear hearing aids due to long term exposure to the noise of these oddly satisfying relays clicking away.
The fact that you can watch a HD video of this amazing machine on a portable telephone you can carry around in your pocket, is insane. Think about how "simple" these computers were; it literally had to return a result of '6' with two digits (5+1). The fact that engineers were even able to theorize this stuff is mind blowing.
" Tons of memory "
i mean that's 1.6kb, for what it did it was plenty
@@user-qp3qj2jv6f i think he meant that it actually weighs over a ton
@@RoerDaniel possibly
Literally
Literal tons of weight!
Wow, pretty impressive. Sounds like its playing own kind of music while its doing the calculations.
This is fantastic! I've seen the Casio relay calculators but this is way more interesting. When learning about digital logic a while back, I tried guessing how to build some relay computer parts out of big relay elevator controllers. It all started because I wanted to design a simple sequencer out of relays but got a shift register *by accident*! I had first discovered it could also work as a register and then nearly fainted when it began shifting data (I'd never heard of a shift register before). I didnt get anywhere close to designing a whole computer but it was too interesting to give up so I still have 3 elevator controllers (300 relays).
@@asificam1 For many people, that is completely true in totally realistic context. No doubt.
My situation was unusual: I was a teen over 20 years ago with no access to knowledge of how to NOT blow up transistors; yet I did know relays, basic electricity and just enough logic to build something unrelated to the shift register... it was to run one of those ball machine art things. Once I saw the diode relay logic really do it's thing... it was just too interesting! I wasn't bothered by how it could seem in this context over 20 years later. These days I'm into analog transistor circuits that run about 5 mhz, and relays that switch at least 10 amps, for my job. I've learned that it takes fewer then 300 relays to make a computer processor. Relays can have some weird and unlikely advantages when the whole thing is allowed to follow the path of most interesting (where you want to hear and therefore understand the current states by the sound the machine is making, the amps they can switch, that you can very easily poke some relays with a stick to change the state + other things)
A sequencer is easy out of relays I have built them before but if you want a relay sequencer use a Uniselector they were designed for it and plc,s still emulate them in software.
@@asificam1 bc107 for the steam punk look or if you can get them AC128 I have worked on antique Industrial control cards that used DTL in discreet components.
@@dogwalker666 Ah, I have a Uniselector! What I made (in1996) was actually too simple, made of 5 volt SPDT relays with LED's as diode logic. In the end it did what I wanted with the parts I had. Since then I've got loads of stuff, I'd likely use a rotary relay if I were doing that project now.
@@dogwalker666 I forgot to add though (you already know), led's don't like being used the way I did. The LED's were acting both as suppressor diodes for the relays turning off and as logic (memory) sustain when in shift register mode... I think... It's been a while.
Tadao Hamada deserves more than a round of applause for his restoration efforts
Thank you for sharing this with us, and more importantly a big thank you to the restoration team! Alot of hard work and love went into that
That paper loop blew my mind, a real life programming loop!
Isn't it wonderful? I love a computer where you can touch the actual bits.
Also, "昭和34" - no Gregorian years for me, domo arigato :)
As always interesting and uniquely informative as well as entertaining! I love the use of telephone components in the early computers. I actually built a small telephone relay computer when I was in high school in 1962 - but nothing so sophisticated. I later worked with electro-mechanical telephone systems, including those made by Fujitsu. Those telephone system components were designed to last 50 years or more.
Thank you so much for taking the time to film this. What an amazing piece of history.
FANTASTIC! Thx so much for taking the time to produce and share this. You clearly put a lot of work (and love) into this! Congrats on a job well done:)
You continue to amaze Marc,thank you so much. I had never heard of relay computers, but wow.
*Thumbs up if you didn't skip during that precious last calculation* 👍
It's kind of funny that Marc doesn't realize 95% of his viewers would have no interest in skipping ahead. Or he is just being very polite.
How can you... During it my jaw was on my desk.
I guess when you view a relay as just something to switch a circuit in a car, and you then get to see them doing this, is just amazing.
A sum of boring components come together to make something great, how can you DARE to skip it.
The guy that is talking is soooooo boring
but the noise. I couldn't imagine being a computer scientist in those days. People complain about a loud cooling fan nowdays lol.
👍🏼
Given the limits of the technology at the time, this is an impressive machine. I love the sounds it makes.
As a Electronics engineering student everyday I learn more about computers the less I can believe that they are possible, they are beautiful and complicated.
I'm amazed!
Absolutely delightful. And skip ahead through something like an actual relay computer actually running an actual problem? Never! Thank you for keeping all of it in.
What a wonderful restoration, its nice to see corporate history museums like this. The seiko one is particularly complete!
Awesome video, you can really appreciate the hard work it took to restore this computer, and how far computers have come. Just awesome.
What a wonderful machine. Kudos to those who designed and have kept it running. Also it's great to see a control panel with flashing lights that mean something!
Awesome machine! I'm so happy to see it preserved. This really brings back two memories for me - one was visiting a working telephone switching facility in the early 1970's. It was fascinating as a junior high school kid to watch all the relays work; to hear and see a call come in as the relays counted the dial pulses and then passed the call down through all the stages. The whole room felt almost alive as calls came in on one side of the building and flashed through the racks to the other side. The second was a project that my brother and I undertook a couple years later. Using relays that had been discarded from that same telephone switching facility as it was converted to electronic switching, we set out to build an electronic combination lock using only relays. It used a 4x5 matrix keyboard salvaged from a discarded Rockwell calculator as the input device. It took quite a few revisions to work out all the race conditions, de-bounce the keyboard, and so on, but in the end it worked and it was a fantastic learning experience.
I wonder if anyone has a switchboard in their museum 😊
Glad to see that they saved at least one, as quite often happens with older things is they are destroyed and when that happens we loose our basics of how something works. Also old equipment is a good learning tool to get to understand the modern equipment and is usually available at a much lower cost.
You just described premise of this channel, pretty much exactly!
This is a fabulous throwback to my days of dealing with relay computers in the aerospace era.
Some incredible custom relays were made for those machines.
What a great piece of history. Congratulations to the team that keeps that machine alive so we all can learn from the past. Thank you very much for making this video.
You must be honoured to be given such a deep insight into this fabulous machine. Thanks for sharing. Truly remarkable
Fascinating video. Thank you so much for sharing. To be able to be apart of preserving such a wonderful piece of history would be quite an honor! Hearing it I just closed my eyes and enjoyed for a moment. I would not think of skipping such an amazing machine speaking. It's like listening to an older person telling stories. I can hear the same story over and over!
Very fascinating. Thank you very much for this, and I wish I could thank your hosts for their kindness.
it really is nice being around engineering types and people who appreciate these kinds of things. Thank you so much for bringing this to the rest of the world
Simply awesome. I spend my life programming and started 30+ years ago. I love watching the roots of the industry and what a gift to have this so well restored. As has been mentioned in other comments.. no way I’m skipping ahead! It’s all about the clicking and flashing lights! 😋
Totally 😅. Too bad the current computers cant make those sounds
I did not skip a second of the vid! Love the sound it makes while the Lights are flashing!
The "simplicity" of old computers is wonderful I think, being able to see every part, how it works etc.
I always go back to basics when I want to understand how computers works and seeing this on preserved and WORKING is rely awesome!
Thanks Marc for the video and also thanks for the splendid work you and your team did restoring the AGC!
I worked for Fujitsu with Facom computer, was fantastic, the machines are very advanced
This needs to be the most coolest and well preserved pice of history I’ve ever seen
The high quality in every bit of the machine and the ease of the user interface are very impressive. Interesting to see the implemented random access read only memory! That's a huge speed up and simplification for the software developers back then. Very interesting video!
I love the sound of electromechanical computers, makes me want to make music from the auditory patterns and loops
Please do!
Great job going there and taking a look at that fascinating thing.
Seeing this wonderful old machine run makes me miss my UYK-7.
Ha the loop being an actual loop of paper is hilarious and mind blowing after imagining some of the nested loop madness I need almost everyday at work =P
Probably where the term originated.
Amazing! Gotta go to Japan and see this in operation. Whoever designed this was brilliant.
Excellent history lesson. I love the Japanese, innovation and perfection equals time honored products.
I'm impressed as heck. What a wonderful machine. Bravo!
Fascinating tour of an amazing machine. I just love the sounds it makes.
That was a perfect video, thank you so much for making and uploading something so interesting and impressive. If anybody doubts the power of this machine, just try inverting a five by five matrix by hand. Congratulations to the design, build and maintain teams.
This machine is a thing of such supreme beauty.
This was great! I really appreciate that somebody put so much effort into making this.
There is a book that covers the history of Fujitsu’s computers and Ikeda-san: 「国産コンピューター ゼロからの大逆転」～日本技術界 伝説のドラマ ―命輝け ゼロからの出発 プロジェクトX～挑戦者たち
Tons of memory... Literally! :)
Fascinating video, thank you to all who participated!
That's incredible! Thank you for recording that!
The very first computer "bug" was a moth found under a relay in the Harvard Mark I by none other than Grace Murray Hopper. You can see her journal with that moth taped into it at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Back in the days when there was no text books on that subject.
Just to let you know Fujitsu's Fugaku is the world's fastest computer as of 2020.
I'm so happy that this is not only preserved, but also kept operational so people can actually see it work. It's one thing to just see a dead machine sitting in a museum doing nothing. It's a whole other feeling to see that equipment operating just as it would have on an average day of work. So cool!
Wonderful video! I'll watch this again and again. Thank you Marc! Stay safe and be happy. Best, Job