Oldest original proper computer (stored program etc)

[William Donzelli]

> Certainly mechanical analogue computers were common in fire control, and must have got replaced by something more modern,

Sometime by 1960 the digital machines started getting into fire
control. Of course, the analog stuff never breaks, so they tend to
hang around on the older ships as well.

I had the chance to get a couple of US Navy Mk 50somethings about ten
years back, but passed when I found all the cards had been stripped
out.

> but I would restrict the list to stored program machines. Nickel delay lines were likely used and drums used directly for executing code would of course work on a ship too. Williams tubes maybe, and the earliest core memory machine would have been military too.

Cores and drums. Old military core is pretty common, and every so
often you can find neat little drum units.

> Maybe because they are excluded by secrecy, as happened with the UK's  WW2 German code breaking machines until the story got out and Bletchley Park was saved.

Yes, very much so. The US codebreaking technology in WW2 is still
pretty classified. The Soviet stuff is the great unknown, and the
German stuff is basically lost.

--
Will