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Are Thinking Machines Possible?

How imagination and a kids’ toy built an early computer

Andy Porter
Thought Thinkers
9 min readAug 12, 2024

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Manchester Differerential Analyser from the Science Museum (image: Wikimedia Commons)

“Your Uncle Arthur built the first computer”

This surprising piece of information was lodged in my brain from around the age of 8. At that time, in the late 1960s, just to house a computer capable of doing anything remotely useful required a temperature-controlled room the size of a small warehouse, with a reinforced concrete floor. Computers did not arrive from Amazon by courier but were transported in large trucks and their components craned into position for on-site assembly. A “mini-computer” had the dimensions of two oversized American style fridge/freezers bolted together.

To purchase one of these mysterious humming, clicking and flashing machines you had to be a bank, or a large multinational, or the Ministry of Defence. To operate one involved a phalanx of engineers with brains the size of, well, computers.

“and he made it out of Meccano” …

This second, perhaps even more startling piece of information, was imparted as an immediate follow-up to the first by my dad as he puffed on his pipe and the reassuring blue/grey haze of Players Whiskey Flake tobacco slowly filled one end of our lounge.

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Thought Thinkers
Thought Thinkers

Published in Thought Thinkers

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Andy Porter
Andy Porter

Written by Andy Porter

I write scripts, prose and satirical poetry - usually to make other people smile, but firstly to make me smile. "Funny, fab images & joyous juxtapositions!"

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