The WITCH: The oldest working example of a First Generation computer in the world

Built in 1951, the WITCH began life as the Harwell Dekatron Computer and was used to calculate logarithmic tables for the construction of the Harwell Nuclear Reactor. In 1956, the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire College of Technology won ownership of the WITCH in a competition; this is the root of its current name, which stands for Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell (WITCH). Today, the WITCH is crucial to the Education Programme at The National Museum of Computing.