Australia’s oldest computer could show us how quantum might become a reality Sun 2 Aug 2026 at 5:00am Peter Thorne still regularly thinks about a weekend job he had almost 70 years ago, running a computer the size of a garage. "They needed somebody to turn it on, run the test programs and make sure it worked for people at the weekend," he says. The device Dr Thorne was in charge of — called the CSIRAC — is the fifth automatic digital computer ever built, and the first in Australia. "It was … probably the most complicated electronic machine in Australia at that time," he says. Loading... The computer — parts of which are still on display — is a behemoth. It weighs close to two tonnes, and has the energy requirements of a cul-de-sac worth of homes. Heading inside the belly of the machine, he points out the dozens of vacuum tubes, fans and a large hard drive that once upon a time would spin. "Every component had to be hand-soldered into place," he explains. "It was grey, it was dominating, it was undoubtedly powerful." A complicated machine that could answer complicated questions. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, CSIRAC was in high demand, doing difficult calculations in a few hours that would take a person months of work. But despite an early lead in computing science research, Australia soon took its foot off the accelerator, leaving it to other countries to develop the sector. Today, CSIRAC sits in a museum in Melbourne as a symbol of Australia’s early innovation in classical computer technology. Decades after this homegrown computer was retired, Australia is aiming to once again be a global innovator in the field. Start-ups and governments are making a big bet on a new technology that may