The first task for the world’s earliest computer – the Manchester-built Mark One – was to compose romantic verse.

After creating the Mark One’s small-scale prototype, the Baby Computer, in 1948, Manchester University scientists earned world-wide fame.

Then dozens of pioneer software programs were specially written, only to be lost over time.

But German academic David Ward has turned up a light-hearted love-poetry generator program written by Manchester scientist Christopher Strachey in 1952 to test the machine’s ability to randomly select information.

Ward, a German computer ‘archaeologist’ unearthed the program while researching Strachey’s papers at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and then spent three months creating his own version of the ‘software.’

His website allows visitors to generate their own random ‘poetry’.

Also, the expert has created a working replica of the One ‘Baby’ computer which will run the love letter programme for an exhibition in Germany.

ANI
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