When dealing with quantum computing things move quickly and the industry is worried that the government is not keeping up.
Lord Vallance, the science minister, travelled from London to Oxford on Monday to pick up one of the 12 quantum computers commissioned for use in the £140 million National Quantum Computing Centre. Eight of the computers have been developed by private tech companies and this one, called Quartet, was built by Oxford Ionics, a five-year-old spinout from Oxford University.
Vallance’s train was delayed by a freight train that had priority. Wags at an event organised to mark the handover of the Quartet could not have asked for a better way to compare Britain’s approach to quantum computing with its rivals: after leading the world in
