Should we have been surprised to learn this week that the US nuclear weapons force still uses a 1970s-era computer system -- complete with 8-inch floppy disks.
Younger listeners may not even know that a floppy is a 1970s- era magnetic storage medium -- a thin disc sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier which you stuck in your computer.
Anyway, the very idea that mission- critical ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers were being run on an old IBM computer, got us thinking about how much ancient computer technology is still in daily use out there. And why.
Prof. Alan Woodward, University of Surrey technologist, joins Nigel Cassidy
