Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 13

Photograph by Harry Porter

HOMEBREW

My Own Relay Computer

By Harry Porter, Ph.D.

When I was a small boy, my dad brought home relays salvaged from a decommissioned telephone exchange. With abundant enthusiasm, I set out to build a computer from a dozen dusty, nonfunctioning telephone relays. I worked on it for a while, but eventually gave up and moved on to other things.

However, I became mesmerized with the idea that machines might someday be made to think, and the possibility of mechanizing consciousness itself. I spent years studying computation ...