ENGLAND: UK's LOTTERY COMPUTER , Britain's Electronic Premium Bonds, Banking System ERNIE 1964
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- Computer History: Origin of the UK's LOTTERY COMPUTER ERNIE, The "PREMIUM BONDS" random number generator, developed by Tommy Flowers for British Government. How it was developed for the world of Finance, Money, and Economics: England's "Electronic Random Number Generator" known as "ERNIE," a commentary on the fascinating1964 British documentary. ERNIE was a unique computing machine based on 1940's technology invented at UK's top secret Bletchley Park code-breaking facility and brought into the world of finance. Originally implemented by UK Government Post Office in 1957. This system is still in use today, using newer, more modern computers. See links below for more information. -- Provided for educational and historical discussion and comment only. Computer History Archives Project: CHAP
(Unofficial, historical introduction, opinion and research, not affiliated with UK Government or its agencies)
For more information:
About ERNIE
ernie.virtualc...
Bletchley Park Museum
bletchleypark....
I am 49 years old, emigrated from England in 1976. My parents remembered they had £4 of these premium bonds, purchased shortly after I was born.
I am currently going through the rather, ah, bureaucratic process of updating my address, all still handled via post!
Hi @KaldekBoch, well, good luck to you on the potential of winning in the future. "ERNIE never sleeps." Hope you win!
I never knew Tommy Flowers was involved in making Ernie. He did so much, and yet seems so unknown.
He was such a great genius!
Those that know know! I work for an encryption company - we named a meeting room "Flowers" after him :)
Nice!
He was a genius, and back then we hired geniuses. I wish they did that now!
He didn't get much recognition due to the Official Secrets Act. His was the great idea of using thermionic valves as switches as opposed to mechanical relays, and so the concept of high-speed logic circuits was born. It was first pooh-poohed because it was beleived that the valves would constantly need replacement, but as they weren't used as amplifiers, the voltage applied to the filaments was low, and this prolonged their lives. The heat from tens of thousands of valves would have been colossal though.
These days, the same principles are used on microchips containing millions of tiny transistors. It would be interesting to see how E.R.N.I.E.'s grandson works.
Oh, this was so incredibly interesting! They really took their random number generator very seriously. Add that bureaCRAZY! It really was insane to see it in action. And interesting, 23:30 Lyons Cakes, The British bakery company that created their own business computer, the Lyons Electronic Office, or LEO.
Hi @albear972, glad you liked this one. Yes, the bureau was an amazingly busy place! Great spotting the Lyons Cakes sign, I had missed that. We have a video of the LEO computer here ruclips.net/video/H_0Astp1dEU/видео.html That was a fascinating story in its own right. Thanks for the great comments! ~ Victor
5:20 _"Who's They?"_
As a manager, I've asked THAT question 1,000 times, of various complaints brought to me, various disagreements and problems of all sorts.
20:00 The British are so good at generating structure. I mean that as a sincere compliment.
So this was a lottery. You purchased a bond (ticket) and it just sat there until you won something?
Thanks for sharing this unusual video.
Yes, the idea is that you can get the capital invested back at any time, but you earn no interest; instead, what would have been paid in interest/dividend goes to the prize fund.
Yes, apparently so. I did not know this system existed, and STILL exists. I lived in England for 4 years and never heard of the Bonds, or ERNIE or the lottery. I wonder who wins... Thanks for the feedback. It was fun making this one.
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject The main value of Premium Bonds today is as a tax-free, secure, savings account with near-instant access and no substantial withdrawal penalties - invest £10k or more and you'll likely win enough small prizes every year to match or beat the (taxable) interest on a regular, instant-access savings account. Plus the "fun" from the negligible dream of winning the £1m jackpot. They don't really make sense unless you've maxed out all your other tax-free savings allowances and put whatever you can afford to risk/lock-up into stocks or fixed-term investments that might actually beat inflation... So possibly geared more towards more well-off people than the original intention - but *still* a better place to put £50 than a jar under your bed. Of course, the 1980s saw the introduction and heavy promotion of the National Lottery - a more traditional for-profit/charity one-shot-per-ticket lottery with a TV-friendly star-studded draw on national TV, which eclipsed Premium Bonds in popular culture and flushed the whole "encouraging people to save" thing down the toilet and makes the whole jar under the bed deal seem sensible... You *won't* make money off the National Lottery unless the magic million-to-one lightning strikes...
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject ruclips.net/video/M2o_QI5PKmQ/видео.htmlsi=EQAqdizVpxHIn086
Yes, and all this costly work wouldn't have been done and initiated if it would not have been to collect all that data from the people on a voluntary bases. A nice idea for a giant cloud smoke, too obvious it is.
And what an advantage to have a cold war against an too obvious outside enemy the SU too.
And the use of male brains - Blechtley Park it her experiance had been there - let go, switch off? No, find new usage, have next gen carrers, keep men and society busy.
And we look on us today too.
The english people participated voluntary - and the heads of UK buerocracy in a way called this 'informed consent'? How scruwed mens brains tend to become as soon as power, domination, rule, 'importance' and rank become involved - what we should all call still just a horde?
And no parliament and no tax office became involved - the people payed all for on their own, brillant smart, simple idea in a way, true?
Not to be confused with the Bennie Hills "Ernie" who drove the fastest milk cart in the west.
A computer driving electric vehicles is still a WiP even today. (Milk delivery trucks were electric years ago). OMG I'm old.
HI @Electrodoc1968, Thanks very much for your feedback on the video. Not sure what "still a WiP" means though. Can you explain? Thanks! ~ Victor
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Work In Progress?
WIP, got it. Thanks!
Interesting... But jeeeez, specialised hardware, dual power generators and hundreds upon hundreds of employees - it's a miracle that it generated any profit to the state.
Yes, surprising. The computer they use now is a fraction of the size and needs little support. Lots of changes....
Those dual power generators don't look quite right. IMO a generator is powered by an ICE (petrol, natural gas, diesel) or a steam turbine. Those look like they are powered by electric motors. If the building loses power they will still spin down though if they have a sufficiently large flywheel the spin down will take longer though the frequency will begin to degenerate immediately which insinuates Ernie was entirely DC powered. If the generators are DC generators then why not just have a large battery bank to backup an AC to DC converter. Jack Armitage should have written that bit of narration instead of someone just excerpting a press release.
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProjectI had a programmable calculator in later 70s that came with a handbook of programs. Among those programs was Battleship and a random number generator. I believe it required a single input for the RNG program which was the number of digits. (Up to the number of digits in the display.)
@@curtislowe4577 The important differences is that would have been a "*pseudo* random number generator" - the output *looks* random to casual inspection, but it it actually just a mathematical series - if you know the algorithm then then each number in the sequence can be calculated from the previous numbers. Usually, such algorithms start by asking you for a random "seed" number to start the sequence from (or they might get that by, say, reading the time and date). If you use the same seed, you'll get the exact same sequence of 'random' numbers each time. OK for "random" motion in games - useless for security. (In fact some games make use of this to generate complex, but consistent "worlds" from a short seed number - Elite would be the classic example, Minecraft a more modern one), With the increasing importance of cryptography, many modern CPUs have a source of "true randmomness" built in - some of which work on a very similar principle to ERNIE, with a "noisy" solid-state component replacing ERNIE's noisy vacuum tube.
At least the money was spent on hiring clever people who constructed this...instead, for example, on social benefits for the thrash
Please please please do more of these!; I'm so bored of the IBM stuff now. We get it, north America made great computers, but dig deeper guys! Please. This was amazing!!!
Hi @MitchLambert, thank you very much for the feedback and interest! We are always looking for historical tech material from around the world and will continue. Hopefully our research will continue to result in fascinating and unique content. Thanks again! ~
0:39 ... make that Bletchley Park.
You are correct! Thanks!
Have you heard "E.R.N.I.E." by Madness? "A thousand winners every week!" 🎵
I bought some premium bonds in 1971. A few years ago I enquired about them, but the Premium bond people replied they had no record of them despite me giving them the numbers. So there's a warning about relying on technology.
Hi @lazyoldmanathome7699, that is fascinating. Hopefully they can find them if they search further. Good luck.
We now know the importance of ERNIE. But what does BERT do? (Bert and Ernie)
Good question. And wasn't it the "Count" who was better at number generation...?
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Count von Count taught kids to count. I'm unsure of his random number generating skills. :/
BERT is the Bit Error Rate Tester. Everyone knows that.
Good one!
amazing amount of people required just to look stuff up. There are a lot of similarities between this and the Danish Klasselotteri, in the way the bonds work and are drawn, just how the money is used and distributed is a little different. Of course nowadays it's all digital and you don't need an army of people running around checking if the winner really has won.
Hi @thesteelrodent1796, fascinating, did not know about that one in Denmark. Thanks! -
And another piece of obscure Ian Anderson lyrics are comprehended by an American.
"Saying -- how's your granny and
good old Ernie: he coughed up a tenner on a premium bond win." (From Thick As A Brick maybe early on Side Two.)
I always thought Ernie was a person and while 'coughed up' wouldn't be correct American slang, maybe it was acceptable as British slang for winning.
'Coughed up' is a fairly regular British term for providing something to give to someone else, often, but not exclusively, money. "The round cost £16.50, so I coughed up a twenty (£20 note), and got £3.50 change.", "He was stood forlornly beside his flat tyre but didn't have the tools to change it, so I delved in my boot and coughed up a spanner." In your lyric, the win was obviously £10 (slang term a tenner). In this case, ERNIE coughed up the number on granny's premium bond.
@@johnd6487 Then 'coughed up' is identical slang on both sides of the pond.
And here we all were thinking that ERNIE drove the fastest milk cart in the west.
It was a fast milk cart too!
Fascinating!
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it. ~ VK
Besides they hired that mass of people for data processing, they had the time to arrange some flowers 😉 I think they made it for the movie.
Indeed, along with the cringeworthy patronising script, so typical of the times!
Would have been so much easier if they had a computer to help them with all that paperwork.
Yes, it would have been faster... perhaps.
I had a few £1 bonds issued in 1963 - had to send them in to get them onto my 'bond records' - shame they hadn't won anything in all that time.
Hi @davewalker7126, perhaps they should give people credit for longevity of the bonds and award at least some measure of compensation for years of support. Just a thought...... Thank you for your commenting. ~ VK
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I suppose thinking about it, each of those £1 bonds has been entered into the draw about 600 times in the last 50 years. With the odds of winning currently around 20,000 to one - so I'd needed to have had over 30 bonds held 50 years to average one win in that time.
Challenging odds....Perhaps the biggest winner is the UK Government....
I think online gambling possibly with a broker will go alongside the lottery and possibly go alongside loan sharking and extremely high interest credit.
That is an interesting concept. Thanks for the feedback! ~
So I am the same age as ERNIE as was born the end of may the same year the draws started. When i started working for the TSB Bank in 74 we used to sell Premium Bonds. I used to think it was only bonds that were in the draws numbers came up. probably is these days with better computers.
"TSB" Toronto Savings Bank" ?
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject It was in the UK Trustee Savings Bank when i started it was The Northumberland and Durham Trustee Savings Bank. In the north east of England.
I was also born in 1964 - 9th of June though.
Happy Sixtieth ERNIE and Paulne9!
@@GothGuy885 The film was from 1964 but the first draw was june 1957.
Got it. Thanks very much!
interesting! that they had redundant power supplies even back then... tho more like a generator based UPS [ Universal Power Supply ]
Hi @GothGuy885, yes, fascinating. The film seemed so show a "motor-generator" type machine on the floor too, which would produce smooth continuous electrical flow. Have to do more research on that to see what it actually was. Thanks for your feedback! ~ VK
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject i Think that the system is a Converter from dc to ac powered from a battery of lead accumulator. As can you see it is composed by three components, in the middle i think is the dc motor, at the far end the alternator and at the other end a dynamo ,the smaller of the three, that produces the exitation voltage for the alternator. At 15:00 seems that he uses a synchroscope to syncronize both generators between each other. perhaps they used this system to avoid legal issue if there is a power failure .
😮And Exactly When Was That????😖💀🦃🍄🐽😱😈
What's the name of british version of the germany "enigma".....?
Are you referring to the British code-breaking machine itself?
"The Importance of Being Ernie", lol. Seems like a lot of mind numbing work, I wonder how fast it was all automated and which jobs were eliminated first and last.
Very good question! It would be a good project to figure that out. Also, there have been numerous "ERNIE" computers after 1973 as they installed newer faster ones.... : )
if you have early savings bonds ( like myself ) we have no chance of winning any thing as our numbers are not put in the draws any more and they should be it's a con their has got to be law on this some where ?
Hi @peterwhitear7716, thank you very much for your feedback and info. You certainly make a good point here. Until recently, I was not even aware this system existed. It has been around a long time apparently. ~
That's appalling. I had no idea they just bypassed all the oldest bond numbers. If there was some perceived incompatibility they should have issued you with replacement contemporary numbered ones.
#50👍
My gran has had her premium bonds since like 1958 and they've never won anything lmao
That is very interesting. I wonder if the "odds" of winning are published anywhere. - thank you for your comment. - VK
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject would be almost impossible as it is based on the interest rate which has changed constantly
I see, good point!
what i hear this is about, is an early form of cypto
Interesting... today it is all based on digital numbers... perhaps you are right.
Nowadays, they use a mainframe computer.
... read that it sits on a desktop though. Not a large machine....
It's not without dreaming back to the time when everything was honest and nothing was about pure greed.
Greed is precisely what the concept of Premium Bonds is about.
Hi @CasinoWoyale, interesting point. : )
That sounds like a nice dream. : )
"the time when everything was honest and nothing was about pure greed" ... That time must have been pre Shakespeare and pre the Bible.
I suppose it was a "new and exciting" way of getting people to lend the government small amounts of money when the rest of the country was bankrupt and being required to repay a certain nation for their help during the war. In the US 1950s = boom time; in the UK 1950s = a miserable grey and grimy period with coal fires in houses still, and incessant winter cold indoors -- frost on the inside of windows, for example. I remember it!