Last week I had the pleasure of giving two talks on the history of the computer at the Paris headquarters of the quantum computing company Pasqal. During my visit I was given a tour of the company’s labs and was shown how they are able to manipulate atoms using lasers in order to create arrays of ‘qubits’, the fundamental unit of information in quantum computing. It’s an incredibly complex process which requires a room full of delicate equipment to accomplish. The technology is still at a relatively early stage but the results are encouraging.
While in Paris I also took the opportunity to visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers, a museum of technological innovation founded in 1794. The museum’s impressive collection includes numerous computing-related items, including several of Blaise Pascal’s ‘Pascaline’ calculators (as described in Chapter 1 of The Story of the Computer), the control panel from an IBM 7030 ‘Stretch’ computer (see Chapter 7 of the book) and a Cray 2 supercomputer. Here are some photos I took of these items:-
The Story of the Computer 