Monday, November 21, 2011

Ten Bob, Ted Bastin & the paranormal



Norman Sanders of Ipswich wrote to The Times last week to point out that a picture of the wrong EDSAC had been used to illustrate their obituary of Ted Bastin: ‘The pictured EDSAC1 was taken away for ten shillings by a man with a horse & cart in mid-1958, by which time EDSAC2, a very different machine, was up & running & was that used by Mr Bastin in the early 1960s.’

I was left wondering about the direction of this transaction; did the carter pay for the scrap, or did the University have to pay to get rid of the unwanted contraption?

It was not much later than that that I was considered lucky to get £1 from a mother who wanted a piano for her daughter, instead of having to pay someone to take mine away because it was deemed to be one of the items which had to be disposed of as we were moving to a smaller house in the city, & pianos were no longer considered an essential or desirable feature of every home, or playing it a vital accomplishment for every young lady. And it is odd to think now that residential property was so much cheaper in a small country town in the days when anyone who even contemplated a long commute would have been thought to have taken leave of their senses.

Ted Bastin was a remarkable character whose interests extended beyond Combinatorial Physics to embrace the paranormal & religion. In 1972 he organized a small select meeting to observe Uri Geller in action – the audience included Arthur Koestler, Arthur C Clarke & (a young) Kwame Anthony Appiah – I think I remember reading reports in the press. Bastin recorded his mixed feelings about what he had witnessed, which would make interesting reading now (A copy is available on the web)



Picture comes from Early English computers & shows the cabinet of the Cambridge University EDSAC II computer (1957), showing the microprogram control store
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