The Lighter Note

Anniversary gig     

The Note has had a love-hate relationship with computers ever since we first attempted to grapple with an Atari system back in the day.

Nevertheless, we respect the role diodes, punch cards and computer chips have had in our progress through various levels of ignorance from student to journalist.

So it is with some pleasure that we note this year marks the 50th anniversary of the first stored-program digital computer in Western Australia; in 1962, an IBM 1620 arrived at the Physics Department at UWA from Brazil ... by sea. 

The new machine took the only air-conditioned room on campus at the time and probably had computing power that would be beaten by the average digital wristwatch these days.

The Australian Computer Society is having a dinner next month to mark the occasion.

Dirty talk     

Moving from high tech to a far more base subject, the Note this week stumbled across an audit of the sewerage system in Dumbleyung.

While it is clear someone in the Wheatbelt’s town administration ought to get a calendar and circle a few dates when its reporting obligations fall due, the audit also underscored how difficult it is to fund infrastructure in the regions.

The scheme needs $103,328 put aside each year until 2062 to fund its replacement while annual running and maintenance costs are somewhere between $73,346 and $98,217. That is hard to reconcile against rates collected each year of just $40,000 from a collective base of customers amounting to the grand total of 230 people.