THE CIRRUS COMPUTER Its Design, History and Significance
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EEE Anna/S of the History of Computing, Volume 14, 1992, Subject/Title Index (Author Index Appears on P
EEE Anna/s of the History of Computing, Volume 14, 1992, Subject/Title Index (Author Index appears on p. 92) 51 Nemausa, Oct. 92,28,29 Artifact Collectors, July 92,49 Boilen, Sheldon, Jan. 92,22; Apr. 92,42 2001:A Space Odyssey, July 92,53 Artificial intelligence (AI), Jan. 92, 21, 40, 62; Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), Jan. 92,22; A Apr. 92,31; July 92,68,80 Apr. 92,15,16,42 ASCC, see Automatic Sequence Controlled Bolt, Dick, Apr. 92,5 A-O, Jan. 92,55; Apr. 92,57 Calculator, Apr. 92,14; Oct. 92,13 Bombe, Apr. 92,52; July 92,9,12 A-2, Apr. 92,57 Aspray, William, Apr. 92,4; July 92,5; Oct. 92, Bonfanti, Corrado, Jan. 92,56 Aberdeen Proving Ground, July 92,76; Oct. 92, 14 Boole, George, July 92,44 11 Assembly language, Jan. 92.38.62 Booth, G.W., Oct. 92,43 ACM, see Association for Computing Ma- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Bootstrap, Oct. 92,45 chinery, Apr. 92,58; July 92,77 Apr. 92,58; July 92,77 Boston Tech, July 92,55 Adams, Charlie, Jan. 92,35 Atari: July 92,67 Boundary registries, Jan. 92,42 Admiral Grace Murray Hopper Scholarship, Atlas operating system, Oct. 92,57 Bowker, Geoffrey, Oct. 92,14 July 92,51 Atlas, Oct. 92,57 Bowman, Ray, July 92,17 Advanced Research Proiects Agency (ARPA), Atomic structures, Oct. 92,29 Boys, S.F., Oct. 92,30,32 Jan. 92,3,21; Apr. 92,4,16,-17 Autocorrelation function, Jan. 92,35 Bragg, Lawrence, Oct. -
Atlas 2 at Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory (And Aldermaston and CAD Centre)
Atlas 2 at Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory (And Aldermaston and CAD Centre) Barry Landy, November 2012 How it came about The Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory (“Maths Lab”) had a long history of designing its own machines. EDSAC (1949-1958) was the world’s first fully functional stored program (Von Neuman) computer on which it offered a full computing service for users (the world’s first). EDSAC 2 (1958-1965), the first micro-programmed computer, carried on the innovative tradition. However, by 1961 it was time to buy or design a new machine, but this time Maurice Wilkes didn’t want another home-made one. He had £250,000 offered by the UK government available to buy a replacement for EDSAC 2. This could have bought a KDF9 but that was only about the power of EDSAC 2. The only viable machines were an IBM 7090 or an Atlas, neither of which could be afforded. The price tag for the Atlas was £2,000,000. Peter Hall (Ferranti’s Computer Manager at the time) suggested they sell Cambridge the processing unit of Atlas at “works cost”, with Cambridge and Ferranti designing a simpler memory and peripheral arrangement, thereby providing a machine for Cambridge, and a cheaper version of Atlas for Ferranti to market. David Wheeler was design authority for the joint team, responsible for design of the memory access and peripheral coordinator and any consequential modifications to the basic hardware. The wiring diagrams were designed on EDSAC 2 by Roger Needham. While the hardware was built at West Gorton it was agreed that commissioning would happen at Cambridge and two engineers from West Gorton were seconded to Cambridge for that purpose. -
The Atlas Story
The Atlas story. Simon Lavington. Second edition, 6 th December 2012. Contents. Introduction page 1 Birth pains 1 Atlas at Manchester 1 Ferranti and the market place 5 Timeline 6 Technical innovations: facts and figures 6 The London Atlas 8 The Chilton Atlas 9 The Atlas 2 developments 11 Titan at Cambridge 13 Atlas 2 at AWRE Aldermaston 13 Atlas 2 at the CAD centre 13 More technical details of Atlas installations 15 Physical layout 17 Organisation of the Atlas storage hierarchy 17 Format of an Atlas instruction. 19 Guide to the Atlas Supervisor 20 People and places 21 More information 22 Originally produced for the Atlas Symposium held on 5 th December 2012 in the School of Computer Science, Kilburn Building, University of Manchester. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help given by many former Atlas pioneers in the writing of this brochure. Comments on the text are welcomed and should be sent to Simon Lavington : [email protected] Picture credits to copyright holders. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge: Figure 9 Graham Penning: Figure 10 Simon Lavington: Figure 3 Iain MacCallum: Front cover Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester Figures 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory: Figures 7a, 7b, 8 (On 5 th December the original printed version of this document had a cover design based on photographs of the Atlas at Manchester University in 1963). i By the end of 1955 there were less than 16 production digital computers in use in the UK. They were of five British designs, from five different companies, and were single-user systems with practically no systems software. -
Christopher Strachey and the Development Of
Christopher Strachey and the Development of CPL by Martin Richards [email protected] www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr10 Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge Mon Oct 17 08:16:40 BST 2016 Abstract Chrisopher Strachey was the most significant contributor to the design and implementation of the programming language CPL. At the time there was little understanding of the complexities of computer language design and how type systems could cope with lists and the kinds of structures needed to represent, for instance, parse trees. The CPL project cannot be regarded as being successful since it did not result in a usable CPL compiler. The reasons being that the language became too large and complicated, there were insufficient people to implement the compiler and, in the middle of the three year project, all work had to be transferred from Edsac 2 to Titan, a newly designed version of the Ferranti Atlas computer which as yet had no operating system. Even so, we can be proud of the work that went into CPL and its influence on the design of many later languages. Keywords: Edsac, Titan, CPL, BCPL 1 Introduction Before discussing the development of CPL it it necessary to have some understanding of what computer facilities were available at Cambridge at the time. The first electronic computer in Cambridge was constructed under the Direction of Maurice Wilkes and successfully ran its first program in May 1949. It was a serial machine with up to 512 35-bit words of memory stored in mercury delay lines. Each word could contain two 17-bit instructions. -
History and Spirit of C
History and Spirit of C Olve Maudal, Cisco Systems 45 minute session at NDC TechTown, Kongsberg, 19. October 2017 The history of C in 90 seconds http://thesourceny.com/welcome/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/stage-red-curtain.jpg At Bell Labs. http://www3.nd.edu/~atrozzol/BellLabs1959.jpg Back in 1969. http://www.multicians.org/picnics.html Ken Thompson wanted to play. Ken Space Travel http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Ken_n_dennis.jpg He found a little used PDP-7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-7#/media/File:Pdp7-oslo-2005.jpeg Ended up writing a nearly complete operating system from scratch. https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-08/1983_08_BYTE_08-08_The_C_Language#page/n190/mode/1up In about 4 weeks. “Essentially one person for a month, it was just my self.” (Ken Thompson, 1989 Interview) In pure assembler of course. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp7/PDP-7_AsmMan.pdf Dennis Ritchie soon joined the effort. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Ken_n_dennis.jpg While porting Unix to a PDP-11 Dennis Ken http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/picture.html they invented C, http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ctut.pdf heavily inspired by Martin Richards’ portable systems programming language BCPL. GET “LIBHDR” LET START() BE WRITES(“Hello, World”) Martin Richards, Dec 2014 http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ctut.pdf In 1972 Unix was rewritten in C. https://code.google.com/p/unix-jun72/source/browse/trunk/src/c/c03.c Due to Steve Johnsons Portable C Compiler, Fact: from “The Development of the C Language” by Dennis Ritchie Unix and C could be ported to all kinds of computer architectures. -
Christopher Strachey and the Development of CPL by Martin Richards the CPL Project
Christopher Strachey and the Development of CPL by Martin Richards www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr10 The CPL Project • The CPL Project ran from about 1962 to the end of 1966. • I was involved as a Research Student from October 1963 to November 1966. • The computing facilities in Cambridge at the time were as follows. EDSAC 1949-1958 EDSAC Details • Mercury delay line memory of 512 35-bit words. • Words could hold two 17-bit instructions. • Fairly slow clock rate, 500kHz. • It had a 71-bit accumulator. • Primitive instruction set but good for high precision arithmetic. • Contributed to at least two Nobel Prizes. Edsac 2 1958-1965 Edsac 2 Details • Bit-sliced machine with 2048 20-bit words controlled by a micro program. • User friendly machine code. • Could perform 40-bit integer and floating point arithmetic. • Extra 16K words of memory added in 1962. • The fifth bit of the effective address of instructions was connected to a loudspeaker. Users found this useful. BCPL Self Compilation Titan 1965-1973 Titan Details • Transistor machine with a core memory of 32K 48-bit words. • 128 24-bit index registers. • 48-bit instructions. • It was a cut down versions of the Ferranti Atlas Computer. • When first installed it had no assembler, no operating system and no compilers. Development of CPL • Initial ideas started in 1961 by Strachey and Wilkes. • The language was to be an extension of ALGOL 60 including the good features and removing or modifying features that were hard to implement efficiently. CPL Name Change • CPL changed from Cambridge Programming Language to Combined Programming Language when the University of London Institute of Computer Science joined the project. -
Scientific Computing in the Cavendish Laboratory and the Pioneering
Department: Head Editor: Name, xxxx@email Scientific Computing in the Cavendish Laboratory and the pioneering women Computors C. S. Leedham Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge; Selwyn College, University of Cambridge V. L. Allan Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge Abstract—The use of computers and the role of women in radio astronomy and X-ray crystallography research at the Cavendish Laboratory between 1949 and 1975 have been investigated. We recorded examples of when computers were used, what they were used for and who used them from hundreds of papers published during these years. The use of the EDSAC, EDSAC 2 and TITAN computers was found to increase considerably over this time-scale and they were used for a diverse range of applications. The majority of references to computer operators and programmers referred to women, 57% for astronomy and 62% for crystallography, in contrast to a very small proportion, 4% and 13% respectively, of female authors of papers. This article is submitted to IEEE. © 2021 puting and other disciplines. This was the case IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. in the University of Cambridge, with advances in Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all computing made by the Mathematical Laboratory, arXiv:2106.00365v1 [cs.CY] 1 Jun 2021 other uses, in any current or future media, in- and scientific discoveries leading to Nobel Prizes cluding reprinting/republishing this material for for members of the Cavendish Physical Labo- advertising or promotional purposes, creating new ratory [1][2]. Many of the advances in physics collective works, for resale or redistribution to depended on the use of the computers of the servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted com- Mathematical Laboratory [3]. -
The Atlas Story
The Atlas story. Simon Lavington. Second edition, 6 th December 2012. Contents. Introduction page 1 Birth pains 1 Atlas at Manchester 1 Ferranti and the market place 5 Timeline 6 Technical innovations: facts and figures 6 The London Atlas 8 The Chilton Atlas 9 The Atlas 2 developments 11 Titan at Cambridge 13 Atlas 2 at AWRE Aldermaston 13 Atlas 2 at the CAD centre 13 More technical details of Atlas installations 15 Physical layout 17 Organisation of the Atlas storage hierarchy 17 Format of an Atlas instruction. 19 Guide to the Atlas Supervisor 20 People and places 21 More information 22 Originally produced for the Atlas Symposium held on 5 th December 2012 in the School of Computer Science, Kilburn Building, University of Manchester. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the help given by many former Atlas pioneers in the writing of this brochure. Comments on the text are welcomed and should be sent to Simon Lavington : [email protected] Picture credits to copyright holders. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge: Figure 9 Graham Penning: Figure 10 Simon Lavington: Figure 3 Iain MacCallum: Front cover Museum of Science & Industry, Manchester Figures 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory: Figures 7a, 7b, 8 (On 5 th December the original printed version of this document had a cover design based on photographs of the Atlas at Manchester University in 1963). i By the end of 1955 there were less than 16 production digital computers in use in the UK. They were of five British designs, from five different companies, and were single-user systems with practically no systems software. -
1 Catalogue MA, for Box-Files MA1 – MA14
Version 1: 4th March 2016. Catalogue MA, for box-files MA1 – MA14. Catalogue of S H Lavington’s own documents on Manchester computing. Scope. These items were donated by Simon Lavington (SHL) in February 2016. They mainly cover the history of stored-program computing at Manchester University and the spin-off industrial developments in the Manchester region that led to the Ferranti Mark I, Mark I*, Mercury and Atlas computers. Other subjects covered include CRT storage patent litigation, NRDC’s activities and associated American developments; correspondence connected with Alan Turing; the growth of the Department of Computer Science at Manchester; SHL’s correspondence with computer pioneers; anniversaries of the SSEM (Baby) and Atlas computers. The time-period is 1945 – 2015. Background. Simon Lavington was born in London in December 1939. He went to Manchester University to study electrical engineering in 1959. Upon graduating in 1962, he joined Tom Kilburn’s Atlas team as a research student and worked on the hardware and software for automatic speech recognition. He became an assistant lecturer in Computer Science in 1965, obtained his Ph.D. in 1968 and thereupon joined Kilburn’s MU5 design team. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1974. He left Manchester in 1986 to become Professor of Computer Science at the University of Essex, where he worked on hardware support for knowledge-based systems. He retired in 2002 and was made Emeritus Professor. Simon has pursued computer history as a hobby since 1968, publishing five books on the subject. He is a committee member of the Computer Conservation Society. -
Cambridge Computing
CAMBRIDGE COMPUTING The First 75 Years Haroon Ahmed Computer Laboratory CAMBRIDGE COMPUTING Th e First 75 Years CAMBRIDGE COMPUTING Th e First 75 Years Haroon Ahmed © 2013 Cambridge Computer Laboratory and Third Millennium Publishing Ltd First published in 2013 by Third Millennium Publishing Limited, a subsidiary of Third Millennium Information Limited 2–5 Benjamin Street London UK EC1M 5QL www.tmiltd.com ISBN 978 1 906507 83 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Written by Haroon Ahmed Photography by Alan Davidson Managing Editor, Susan Millership Editorial assistance by Neil Burkey Designed by Matthew Wilson Production by Bonnie Murray Reprographics by Studio Fasoli, Italy Printed by Gorenjski Tisk, Slovenia Contents Preface 6 Foreword 8 1 Babbage’s ‘Magical Machines’ 10 2 The Genesis of the Computer Laboratory 20 3 Maurice Wilkes: Computer Pioneer 34 4 Maurice Wilkes and the EDSACs 44 5 Maurice Wilkes: New Directions of Research and the End of an Era 66 6 Computing for All: Networking the University from 84 EDSAC Users to Desktops and Laptops – David Hartley 7 Spreading the Word: Teaching Computer Science 94 and Technology – Peter Robinson 8 The Computer Laboratory, 1980–2012: 104 The ‘Needham Years’ and the Modern Era 9 Entrepreneurs, Spinning Out, Making Money and 122 Linking with Industry 10 The Computer Laboratory on its 75th Birthday: 142 A Centre of Research Excellence Bibliography 162 List of Subscribers 166 Index 170 Acknowledgements and Picture Credits 176 Preface ambridge Computing is an illustrated history celebrating the 75th anniversary of the foundation of Cthe Computer Laboratory on 14 May 1937 and marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Professor Sir Maurice Wilkes on 26 June 1913. -
Maurice Vincent Wilkes: La Aportación Europea a Los Primeros Ordenadores
Maurice Vincent Wilkes: la aportación europea a los primeros ordenadores Exposición biobibliográfica Organiza: Biblioteca de la ETSIIT E.T.S. Ingenierías Informática y de Telecomunicación Inauguración: 18 de octubre de 2012 Maurice Vincent Wilkes: la aportación europea a los primeros ordenadores Exposición organizada por la Biblioteca de la E.T.S. Ingenierías Informática y de Telecomunicación de la Universidad de Granada Catálogo de la Exposición Biblioteca de la ETSIIT Inauguración: 18 de octubre de 2012 En esta hoja podéis poner vuestros datos de impresión Impresión: Granada, Entorno Gráfico, 2012 Prólogo El presente Catálogo contiene la exposición que tuvo lugar en la Biblioteca de la ETSIIT de la Universidad de Granada durante los meses de octubre-noviembre de 2012 y titulada: Maurice Vincent Wilkes: la aportación europea a los primeros ordenadores. La muestra se enclava dentro de la actividad que con el título, “Homenaje a…”, esta biblioteca viene realizando todos los años con motivo de la llegada de los nuevos estudiantes a este Centro, y con la que se pretende homenajear a personajes pioneros y/o sobresalientes en los campos de la Informática y de la Telecomunicación. La actividad, además de la exposición, consta de una conferencia impartida por un profesor del Centro. El primer evento de esta índole se realizó en 2009 y el personaje elegido fue Alan Turing, para continuar al año siguiente con la figura de Charles Babbage y en el último año con la de Ángela Ruíz Robles. Nuestro interés por este tipo de eventos, donde tratamos de recordar o visibilizar a personajes relevantes de las TICs, comenzó en 2009 con la Exposición: MIT: Mujeres en la Informática y la Telecomunicación, donde se expusieron obras de mujeres destacadas como teóricas, inventoras o gestoras en Informática y Telecomunicación. -
Ferranti Atlas 2 Computers at AWRE Aldermaston and at the CAD Centre
Ferranti Atlas 2 computers at AWRE Aldermaston and at the CAD Centre. Simon Lavington. [email protected] Contents. 1. Introduction. 2. What sort of beast was Atlas 2? 3. Atlas 2 at AWRE Aldermaston. 3.1. Computational background. 3.2. The acquisition of an Atlas 2. 3.3. Software activity at AWRE. 4. Atlas 2 at the CAD Centre, Cambridge. 4.1. Background and birth. 4.2. Equipment and facilities. 4.3. The CAD Centre legacy. 5. Acknowledgements; picture credits. 6. References. Appendix 1: The hardware differences between Atlas 1 and Atlas 2. A1.1. Basic functional units. A1.2. Hardware alterations for the multi-access system. 1. Introduction. The Ferranti Atlas 2 computer (see ref. [1]) was a development of the larger Atlas 1 machine. Atlas 2 was based on research carried out at the University of Cambridge on a prototype called Titan, which was in operation at the University from 1964 to 1973. The aim of the Titan/Atlas 2 project, with Ferranti’s blessing, was to produce a cheaper – but still very effective – high-performance computer. The design authority for the joint Ferranti/Cambridge team was David Wheeler of the University’s Mathematical Laboratory. The basic Atlas design had originated some years earlier at the University of Manchester in a project called Muse; Muse was further developed in the period 1959 – 1962 by a joint University/Ferranti team led by Tom Kilburn. The history of the Muse and Titan projects is recounted in references [2] and [3], which were written for a website celebrating the 50 th Anniversary of Atlas in 2012 – see: http://elearn.cs.man.ac.uk/~atlas/ This present article pulls together similar retrospective and anecdotal sources, with the objective of paying tribute to Atlas 2.