A Painting of the World's Oldest Digital Computer Has Gone Missing

Portrait of a Dead WITCH by artist John Yeadon might not be the most high-profile artwork. But it's been mysteriously missing since October 2014, and the staff at the UK's National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) at Bletchley Park want to find it.

Created by Yeadon in 1983, the painting depicts the Harwell Dekatron computer, or WITCH (Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell), which the museum claims is the world's oldest functioning digital computer. Weighing in at two and a half tons, the WITCH computer dates back to the 1950s. It began operating in 1951 and was used for educational purposes.

Have you seen this painting? Image:

Portrait of a Dead WITCH

, John Yeadon

According to the TNMOC, Yeadon was entranced by the machine when he first saw it in Birmingham's Museum of Science and Industry. Taking pity on the "diabolical contraption," the artist said he wanted to "give this dead computer new life" by painting it in a lively and anthropomorphic way.

Yeadon's seven-feet-high by nine-feet-wide acrylic painting was sold at an auction in Lincoln for just £75 ($119) in 2014, and its whereabouts have been unknown since. The artist is about to hit 70 and wants to find the painting for a retrospective exhibition. Meanwhile, the WITCH computer was restored in 2012, and staff at the museum want to acquire Yeadon's portrait and have it tell the story of the computer in a different way.

Dubbing the WITCH computer a "remarkable machine that has survived against all the odds," Kevin Murrell, a TNMOC trustee, said in a press statement: "Paintings of computers are quite rare and this is especially significant in depicting one of the earliest computers."