Christie's auction and other computer history events

[William Donzelli]

> First, while the magnetron existed since the 1920's (but then, it
> was a curious side-effect of some other function, this microwave
> "whistle") what the british did wa make it output WATTS to
> KILOWATTS, one or many orders of magnitude in output. THat's when
> RADAR because usable.

BINGO! The truth...

> Without radar there would have been no electronic computers.

I don't know about that. Certainly digital electronics got a huge boost
from radar technology (all those 6SN7GTs...), but I think someone would
have tried to get rid of relays at some point (probably the telco folks), 
and computers would have followed.

William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org