Slashdot reader v3rgEz writes: When MuckRock started using public records to find the oldest computer in use by the U.S. government, they scoured the country — but it wasn’t until a few tipsters that they set their sights a little higher and found that the oldest computer in use by the government might be among other planets entirely. The oldest computer still in use by the U.S. government appears to be the on-board systems for the Voyager 1 and 2 space probes — nearly 40 years old, and 12.47 billion miles away from earth. (Last year NASA put out a call for a FORTRAN programmer to upgrade the probes’ software.) But an earlier MuckRock article identified their oldest software still in use on earth — “the computers inside the IRS that makes sure everybody is paying their taxes”. And it also identified their oldest hardware still in use — “the machines running the nuclear defense system”. (The launch commands are still stored on 8-inch floppy disks.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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MuckRock Identifies The Oldest US Government Computer Still in Use
