The 61-year-old WITCH still calculates
If you are imagining a really old woman with a crooked nose zapping around on a broomstick, you are imagining the wrong kind of witch. The WITCH that we're talking about is actually the Hardwell Dekatron, a 61-year-old giant calculator that looks like something right out of Star Trek. The WITCH weighs over 2.5 tons, has over 10,000 moving parts and can work relentlessly for over 80 hours in a week without making a single mistake. It is made completely out of parts that were commonly available in a 1950s telephone exchange.
The calculator was initially used for mathematical modeling at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell. It was eventually phased out, dismantled into 50 parts and put into storage. However, in November 2012, the device was put together again and is considered to be the world's oldest working digital computer.
The light that never goes out
No, we're not talking about the light at the end of the tunnel. This is a regular filament light bulb that has been burning bright since the time of Edison himself, at a fire station in Livermore, California.
The light has achieved celebrity status and has its own Guinness World Record. It was installed in the Livermore Fire Station in 1901 and has been turned off only for about a week since then. It was designed by Adolphe Chailet whose bulb designs have been known to last longer than Edison's inventions.
The light has its own fan club, a CCTV camera and a website and if that wasn't enough, nobody knows how it still continues to burn.
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