(Image: Leandro Castelao)
A mysterious quantum property is already harnessed in your hard drive – now it's set to take over the rest of your gadgets
ONE foggy day in early December 1943, a giant awoke. Born in an engineering lab in north-west London, Colossus was the world's first digital, programmable electronic computer – a tower of racks and wires that ate its way through miles of punched-card instructions every hour. Its processing power would enable the Allies to quickly decipher messages from Nazi high command – and help them win the second world war.
Computers have come a long way in the 70 years since, but deep down they work in essentially the same way: by manipulating electrical charge. Guided by its punched cards, Colossus moved charge through thousands of glowing valves. In modern computers, charge passes through millions upon millions of transistors to make the ...
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