Ernie: The fastest premium bonds machine in the north-west relaunched

Ernie - the venerable computer in charge of randomly picking premium bonds winners - has been overhauled.

National Savings and Investments (NS&I), which runs the premium bonds scheme on behalf of the government, introduced the fourth generation Ernie (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) today.

The first Ernie was built in 1956 and has given away £7bn since it began its career of number-crunching. The new, souped-up Ernie was required after a £1m jackpot was introduced for the premium bonds, causing an influx of new bond-holders and a need for extra computing power.

Ernie has to pick the winners each month out of 23 million people who have premium bonds invested, with a total value of £25bn. With the number of monthly prizes set to rise from over 785,000 to one million, each worth between £50 and £1m, the new Ernie was commissioned by NS&I because of a need for a "faster, more innovative machine", according to the company.

Ernie 1 originally took 10 days to choose the winners in the fifties - now, it's just two-and-a-half hours.

The latest Ernie was developed by LogicaCMG and uses thermal noise generated by a 0.01 sq ft chip to pick the numbers. Ernie 1 was built by the team behind the World War II code-breaking Colossus machine.

Ernie is normally based in Blackpool but, to celebrate the fourth-generation machine's launch, the brand-new Ernie and his three predecessors - the 1956 original plus two built in 1973 and 1988 - have been on show in London's Science Museum for the day.