from Hacker News

The First Computers in East Africa and what became of them (2015)

by cobralibre on 2/18/20, 2:18 PM with 9 comments

  • by MrBuddyCasino on 2/18/20, 9:26 PM

    > But the machine in Dar es Salaam disappeared during the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution. At some point during the upheaval, somebody with knowledge of how to dismantle the heavy and complicated machine removed it from its known location. British intelligence later reported that the machine had somehow made its way to China where it had been carefully disassembled and analyzed and used as a learning tool for their computer industry.

    Thats an interesting ending.

  • by jefftk on 2/18/20, 7:50 PM

    > There was a piece of EAM equipment called a “multiplier” that used valves (predecessor to transistors, designed for use in radios and TVs). This machine could read two numbers out of a punched card, and multiply (or divide) them and punch the result back into different columns in the same card. The problem was that it was not very reliable (valves kept burning out – when you have some hundreds of valves, the chances of one “going” while you are processing some thousand of electricity billing cards is pretty likely).

    Note that they're using the British "valve" for what is typically called a "vacuum tube".

  • by contingencies on 2/19/20, 3:54 AM

    Saw an obscure early US computer in the museum of a tin mine in China (Gejiu, Yunnan). I believe it was used to calculate trigonometric functions for mine shaft planning. French presence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries gave way in the 1940s to US presence, before communism and modernity.

  • by perl4ever on 2/19/20, 12:02 AM

    It's kind of weird to think about nuclear reactors being older than computers...particularly in Africa.

  • by badrabbit on 2/19/20, 5:36 AM

    > As part of the British Empire, East Africa used some of the...

    Minor correction,only parts of east africa were British colonies.

  • by droithomme on 2/18/20, 11:24 PM

    What a fun article. Starts in the late 1800s and includes problems where computers go down because of snake shooting.