DOCSLIB.ORG

June 21St by Repeated Subtractions Since the Baby Had That Operation Timothy William Implemented in Hardware

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
June 21St by Repeated Subtractions Since the Baby Had That Operation Timothy William Implemented in Hardware 18 from 2 − 1 downwards. The necessary divisions were done June 21st by repeated subtractions since the Baby had that operation Timothy William implemented in hardware. The Flip-flop Bray The test started at 11.15am, and Born: June 21, 1955; June 21, 1918 terminated after performing 3.5 million operations reliably. Vancouver, Canada William Henry Eccles and Frank Legend has it, quite unfairly, that Bray was one of the co-authors Wilfred Jordan from London’s this was the only program of the XML specification [Feb 10] City and Guilds Technical Kilburn ever wrote. at the World Wide Web College filed a patent for Geoff Tootill wrote a revised Consortium at the end of the “Improvements in Ionic Relays,” version the following month 1990's. which was granted in 1920. (which still exists), and in mid- He had become the manager of The device was originally called July Alan Turing [June 23] the New Oxford English the Eccles–Jordan trigger circuit, submitted a third program that Dictionary (OED) project at the or bistable multivibrator, but the utilized a long division routine. University of Waterloo in 1987, much catchier name, flip-flop, The Baby was deemed fully and worked with SGML, which soon caught on, probably operational in Oct. 1949. would later become central to because of the sound emitted on The machine had been XML's standardization. a speaker during the transition developed over the previous two between its two states. It was Halfway through the XML years by Freddie Williams [June this ability to switch smoothly specification process, Bray 26], Kilburn, and Toothil. It had between states that made it such accepted some consulting work 550 valves, could execute 700 an ideal choice for building from Netscape [March 25], instructions per second, and had digital circuits. It was first provoking protests from 32 words of 32-bit memory. employed in the computing Microsoft. The dispute was domain for the Colossus [Jan 18; As such, it was the first machine eventually solved by the June 1] in 1944. to implement von Neumann’s appointment of Microsoft’s Jean Paoli as another co-editor. stored program concept [June 30]. Indeed, Baby was primarily Although Bray worked for Manchester Baby constructed to test the Williams- Google [Aug 19] for several Kilburn tube [Dec 11], the first years, he left in March 2014 as June 21, 1948 electronic random access he was unwilling to relocate to memory. Other computer Silicon Valley from Vancouver. The Small-Scale Experimental projects, such as the EDSAC Bray said his heart was in Machine (SSEM or Manchester [May 6], had stuck with mercury Vancouver and found the Bay Baby) took 52 minutes to run its delay lines even though they Area “congested, racist, first program. were bulky, expensive, awkward incestuous, and overpriced.” to set up, and relatively slow. There's been plenty of heated debate over which machine was the first to implement von MITRE Corp. Neumann’s concept. Baby was July 21, 1958 an experimental machine, and so some historians claim that the Mitre was formed in 1958 to BINAC ([April 4], 1949) or provide an overall direction to EDSAC were the first "real" the companies involved in the stored program computer. SAGE project [June 26]. Most of MITRE's early employees Turing‘s role in the project was transferred from MIT's Lincoln nominally as the head of the lab, Lab [Dec 15] where SAGE was but according to Maurice Wilkes being developed. [June 26], “Freddie Williams A replica of the Manchester took good care that Turing did After SAGE was fully deployed in Baby on display at the Museum not meddle in the engineering 1963, the Federal Aviation of Science and Industry in design of the machine that he Administration (FAA), selected Manchester. Photo by and Tom Kilburn were building." Mitre to develop a similar KGGucwa. CC BY-SA 3.0. system for automated air traffic Baby's success prompted the control. Unbelievably, the development of the much more National Airspace System (NAS) The 17-instruction sequence, powerful Manchester Mark I is still in use, although the FAA written by Tom Kilburn [Aug [June 16], and the Ferranti Mark has been working on a 11], found the highest factor of I [Feb 12], the first general replacement called NextGen for 218, by testing every integer purpose commercial computer. 1 the last 15 years. It moves away They completed the proof using units were attached at once, they from ground-based air traffic a program that eliminated cases would stretch out many feet to control to a satellite-based (taking over a 1,000 hours to do the side. system. so), making it the first major The TI-99/4A was a commercial theorem proved using a There are around 41,000 NAS flop, mainly because it lost a computer. Other operational facilities in the US, price war with Commodore's mathematicians were skeptical utilizing over 71,000 pieces of at first, but the proof was later VIC-20 [May 00]. After suffering equipment, ranging from radar deficits of over $100 million in independently verified. systems to communication relay 1983, TI discontinued the stations. On average, about To commenorate the event, machine. 50,000 flights use NAS services Appel and Haken’s math each day. department at the University of Illinois issued a postmark with the words, “Four colors suffice.” AS/400 WATFOR Neil Robertson, Daniel P. June 21, 1988 Sanders, Paul Seymour, and IBM announced a new midrange Summer 1965 Robin Thomas created a mainframe, the AS/400, with quadratic-time algorithm in Four math students from the more than 1,000 packages ready 1996 that improved on the University of Waterloo – Gus to run, making it the biggest quartic-time exhibited by Appel German, James G. Mitchell, simultaneous software and Haken’s proof. It also only Richard Shirley and Robert announcement in history. required the checking of 633 Zarnke, led by Peter Shantz, cases. The AS/400 quickly became one developed a Fortran compiler of the world’s most popular for the IBM 7040 [Nov 30] called In 2005, Benjamin Werner and business systems. By 1997, IBM WATFOR (WATerloo FORtran). Georges Gonthier formalized a had shipped nearly a half- proof of the theorem inside the It was fast, with good error million units, and the 400,000th Coq proof assistant [May 1]. diagnostics, and proved popular AS/400 was specially presented with students. The compiler to Greg LeMond, the three-time allowed the 7040 to execute winner of the Tour de France 6,000 jobs an hour, reducing the TI-99/4 bicycle race, on Oct. 9, 1996. cost of running a program from The OS for the AS/400 was $10 to 10c. June 21, 1979 originally called OS/400, WATFOR was soon ported to Texas Instruments (TI) following the pattern begun with other machines, and the announced the TI-99/4 at CES OS/360 [March 31]. Everything textbook “Fortran IV with [June 24], making it the first was an object (with built-in WATFOR and WATFIV” (1970) home computer to use a 16-bit persistence and garbage influenced a generation of microprocessor, the TMS9900 collection), unlike the more computer science students. [June 00]. traditional UNIX-like approach of “everything is a file”. WATFOR's upgrade WATFIV However, the device didn’t meet was pronounced as “WHAT US radio frequency regulations, In 2017, it was estimated that FIVE”. An alternative articulation was “WHAT FOUR”, as in WAT-F-IV. Four Colors Suffice June 21, 1976 A TI-99/4A with all its In 1852, Francis Guthrie noted expansion units. Photo by Ron there were still over 100,000 with some surprise that he only Reuter (aka MainByte). companies using AS/400 needed four colors to fill in a technology, including a great map of English counties. He so was only released in any number of insurance firms. wondered whether it was true of quantity in early 1980. It also any map. suffered from a disappointing “chicklet-like” keyboard, slow In 1976, Kenneth Appel and BASIC, and a high price. Timex Datalink Wolfgang Haken announced that they were able to show that if no TI launched the TI-99/4A in June 21, 1994 more than four colors were 1982 which could be connected The Timex Datalink was co- needed for 1,936 basic cases, to a standard color TV set, and developed with Microsoft as a then more than four would had a better keyboard. However, wearable alternative to PDAs never be needed. if all the possible expansion 2 [Jan 7] with additional attributes was probably the Seiko UC-2000 such as water resistance. It was [Jan 00]. also certified by NASA for space travel. The Datalink was demonstrated Drivers Day by Bill Gates [Oct 28] on this day, and Microsoft initially June 21, 2006 offered them as a mail-in bonus All Windows drivers are dated with every purchase of Office 95 June 21, 2006, even those [Aug 1]. created long afterwards. A driver's version number will increase, but its date timestamp is never changed. This fixed timestamp means that the system decides on which driver to use based on other criteria, including the hardware ID and version numbers. The date's significance is that it was when Microsoft released the Windows Vista RTM (release to manufacturing) version. Current drivers only have to be compatible with this version of Windows, or newer. The Timex Datalink 150. Photo by Dr. K. CC BY 3.0. Early models included the Datalink 50, 70, 150 and 150s, with the numbers indicating the approximate number of phone numbers that could be stored in its memory.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Manchester Baby Simulator Narration
    Manchester Baby Simulator Narration By David Sharp The University of Warwick 11th January 2001 Geoff Tootill’s Highest Common Factor program, written in his notebook 19/6/48. Recent background1 Between 1996 and 1998 much research was done by the Manchester Computer Conservation Society in building an accurate replica of the ‘Baby’ (as of 21st June 1948) for its 50th anniversary. A competition was also staged for people to write programs for the ‘Baby’, the winning program was run on the replica on the 21st June 1998. This rebuild of the replica raised the profile of the Baby and also caused a lot of research into details of the machine that might otherwise have been lost to history. Historical accuracy The display presented by the simulator is a stylized version of the original June 1948 Baby. I have made the interface as much like the original as is possible using Java’s GUI capability. Great pains have been taken to provide an accurate rendition of the Baby’s controls and idiosyncrasies. As well as this original interface, I have borrowed from the “player” notion of Martin Campbell-Kelly’s EDSAC simulator (Raul and Hashagen, p. 400) in providing an alternative modern day interface for loading and running the ‘Baby’. The similarities between the original machine and the simulator interface are shown below in Figure 1. It would be easy for someone to learn to operate the original machine from the simulator. Figure 1: The original Baby’s (above), the replica’s (above right) and the simulator’s (right) interfaces. 1 The history and widespread influence of the development of the Baby is outlined in the introduction to the user guide.
    [Show full text]
  • Manchester Baby Simulator Narration
    Manchester Baby Simulator Narration By David Sharp The University of Warwick 11th January 2001 Geoff Tootill’s Highest Common Factor program, written in his notebook 19/6/48. Recent background1 Between 1996 and 1998 much research was done by the Manchester Computer Conservation Society in building an accurate replica of the ‘Baby’ (as of 21st June 1948) for its 50th anniversary. A competition was also staged for people to write programs for the ‘Baby’, the winning program was run on the replica on the 21st June 1998. This rebuild of the replica raised the profile of the Baby and also caused a lot of research into details of the machine that might otherwise have been lost to history. Historical accuracy The display presented by the simulator is a stylized version of the original June 1948 Baby. I have made the interface as much like the original as is possible using Java’s GUI capability. Great pains have been taken to provide an accurate rendition of the Baby’s controls and idiosyncrasies. As well as this original interface, I have borrowed from the “player” notion of Martin Campbell-Kelly’s EDSAC simulator (Raul and Hashagen, p. 400) in providing an alternative modern day interface for loading and running the ‘Baby’. The similarities between the original machine and the simulator interface are shown below in Figure 1. It would be easy for someone to learn to operate the original machine from the simulator. Figure 1: The original Baby’s (above), the replica’s (above right) and the simulator’s (right) interfaces. 1 The history and widespread influence of the development of the Baby is outlined in the introduction to the user guide.
    [Show full text]
  • De-Mythologising the Early History of Modern British Computing. David Anderson
    Contested Histories: De-Mythologising the Early History of Modern British Computing. David Anderson To cite this version: David Anderson. Contested Histories: De-Mythologising the Early History of Modern British Com- puting.. IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference on History of Computing (HC) / Held as Part of World Computer Congress (WCC), Sep 2010, Brisbane, Australia. pp.58-67, 10.1007/978-3-642-15199-6_7. hal-01059593 HAL Id: hal-01059593 https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01059593 Submitted on 1 Sep 2014 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License Contested Histories: De-Mythologising the Early History of Modern British Computing. David Anderson University of Portsmouth, “The Newmanry”, 36-40 Middle Street, Portsmouth, Hants, United Kindom, PO5 4BT Abstract A challenge is presented to the usual account of the development of the Manchester Baby which focuses on the contribution made to the project by the topologist M.H.A. (Max) Newman and other members of the Dept. of Mathematics. Based on an extensive re-examination of the primary source material, it is suggested that a very much more significant role was played by mathematicians than is allowed for in the dominant discourse.
    [Show full text]
  • ALAN TURING: and the TUTORIAL MANCHESTER MARK I Program the Post-War Machine Used for Early Computer Music, JULIET KEMP Chess and Proto-Artificial Intelligence
    CODING MANCHESTER MARK I ALAN TURING: AND THE TUTORIAL MANCHESTER MARK I Program the post-war machine used for early computer music, JULIET KEMP chess and proto-artificial intelligence. lan Turing’s work at GCHQ with Colossus WHY DO THIS? during WWII is well-known, as of course is the • Take a trip back to the Turing Test, but those were far from his only 1940s A involvements with early computing developments. In • Search for large prime numbers (very slowly) the late 1940s he was working on designing a • Use the logic that first stored-program computer (Colossus couldn’t store inspired the Turing Test programs, and in any case was still very secret), and in 1948 moved to Manchester where the Manchester Baby and Manchester Mark I were being developed. The Manchester Baby (aka the Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine) wasn’t a full general- purpose computer, but a small-scale test of Williams tube memory (cathode ray memory, using the charge well created by drawing a dot or dash on the tube). However, it is considered to be the world’s first stored-program computer, running its first program on 21 June 1948, when it found the highest proper divisor of 2^18 (262,144), and took 52 minutes to run. Only two more programs were written for it: an amended One of Turing’s projects while working on the Mark I was version of this, and a program written by Turing to to write code to investigate the Riemann hypothesis, carry out long division. which has to do with the distribution of prime numbers.
    [Show full text]
  • Lean, Tom. "Electronic Brains." Electronic Dreams: How 1980S Britain Learned to Love the Computer. London: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2016
    Lean, Tom. "Electronic Brains." Electronic Dreams: How 1980s Britain Learned to Love the Computer. London: Bloomsbury Sigma, 2016. 9–33. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 28 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472936653.0004>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 28 September 2021, 05:11 UTC. Copyright © Tom Lean 2016. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. CHAPTER ONE Electronic Brains n June 1948, in a drab laboratory in the Gothic surroundings Iof the Victoria University of Manchester, a small team of electronics engineers observed the success of an experiment they had been working on for months. The object of their interest was an untidy mass of electronics that fi lled the tall, bookcase-like racks lining the walls of the room. At the centre of this bird ’ s nest of cables, radio valves and other components glowed a small, round display screen that allowed a glimpse into the machine ’ s electronic memory, a novel device sitting off to one side hidden in a metal box. This hotchpotch assembly of electronic bits and bobs was offi cially known as the Small- Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), but has become better known as the ‘ Manchester Baby ’ . It was the world ’ s fi rst electronic stored program computer, a computer that used an electronic memory to store data and the program that instructed it what to do, the basic architecture still used by most computers today. Baby ’ s creators, Tom Kilburn, Geoff rey Tootill and Freddy Williams, were all electronics engineers seasoned by years of work developing wartime radar systems under great secrecy and urgency.
    [Show full text]
  • The Baby Machine Os Matemáticos E Os Computadores
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Universidade do Minho: RepositoriUM 1 The Baby Machine os matemáticos e os computadores © José Maria Fernandes de Almeida Tom Kilburn nasceu a 11 de Agosto de 1921 em Earlsheaton, um subúrbio de Dewsbury no Yorkshire em Inglaterra. Em 1940 obteve o grau de BA e em 1942 o de MA em Ciências Matemáticas na Universidade de Cambridge, UK. Em 1942 foi incorporado como "scientific officer" no "Telecommunications Research Establishment - TRE -" em Malvern , UK. Ao chegar a Malvern, em Setembro de 1942 Tom Kilburn disse, naturalmente, que gostaria de ser incorporado no Grupo da Matemática. A resposta foi seca: "o Grupo está cheio, apresente-se a Freddie Williams no pavilhão de cricket". Freddie Williams, mais velho 10 anos que Tom Kilburn, era BSc (1933) em Engenharia pela Universidade de Manchester, DPhil (1936) pela Universidade de Oxford e DSc (1939) pela Universidade de Manchester. A área de investigação de Freddie Williams era a electrónica e desenvolvia, em Malvern, um projecto para explorar a possibilidade de memorizar dados em CRT1 (Cathode Ray Tube) que equipavam o RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging). Quando Tom Kilburn se apresentou a Freddie Williams, que esperava um engenheiro electrotécnico para reforçar a sua equipa, este perguntou-lhe: "Então você o que é ?" ao que Tom respondeu: "Sou matemático por Cambridge". O comentário imediato de Freddie foi: "Oh meu Deus!" e, após uma pausa, continuou: "não faz mal vai aprender depressa a ser engenheiro". Ao longo de quatro anos Tom trabalhou na equipa, mas passados seis meses já se considerava um engenheiro electrotécnico muito competente.
    [Show full text]
  • TURING and the PRIMES Alan Turing's Exploits in Code Breaking, Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence and the Founda- Tions of Co
    TURING AND THE PRIMES ANDREW R. BOOKER Alan Turing's exploits in code breaking, philosophy, artificial intelligence and the founda- tions of computer science are by now well known to many. Less well known is that Turing was also interested in number theory, in particular the distribution of prime numbers and the Riemann Hypothesis. These interests culminated in two programs that he implemented on the Manchester Mark 1, the first stored-program digital computer, during its 18 months of operation in 1949{50. Turing's efforts in this area were modest,1 and one should be careful not to overstate their influence. However, one cannot help but see in these investigations the beginning of the field of computational number theory, bearing a close resemblance to active problems in the field today, despite a gap of 60 years. We can also perceive, in hind- sight, some striking connections to Turing's other areas of interests, in ways that might have seemed far fetched in his day. This chapter will attempt to explain the two problems in detail, including their early history, Turing's contributions, some of the developments since the 1950s, and speculation for the future. A bit of history Turing's plans for a computer. Soon after his involvement in the war effort ended, Turing set about plans for a general-purpose digital computer. He submitted a detailed design for the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) to the National Physics Laboratory in early 1946. Turing's design drew on both his theoretical work \On Computable Numbers" from a decade earlier, and the practical knowledge gained during the war from working at Bletchley Park, where the Colossus machines were developed and used.
    [Show full text]
  • Tom Kilburn: a Tale of Five Computers
    Tom Kilburn: A tale of five computers One of the pre-eminent figures in the early history of computer design was Tom Kilburn. Over the course of some thirty years, he made significant contributions to the development of five important computers. Although a natural team leader possessed of a somewhat dominating personality, who inspired in those who worked closely with him great loyalty and affection, Kilburn was, on casual acquaintance, a self- contained man who chose his words with care. As F.C. Williams put it “What you must always remember is that Tom is a Yorkshireman.”1 Early Days Tom Kilburn was born on the 11th August 1921, near Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, England. His father, John William Kilburn, was a statistical clerk who rose to become a company secretary.1 Tom had a somewhat specialized education at Wheelwright Grammar School having been permitted by his headmaster to study almost nothing else from around the age of 14. It was hardly surprising therefore he emerged from school as something of a mathematical specialist. In 1940, Kilburn went up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, with State, Dewsbury Major, and Minor Open Scholarships. Wartime courses at Cambridge were somewhat truncated and in 1942, Kilburn graduated with First Class Honors in Part I of the Mathematical Tripos and in the preliminary examination for Part II. During the Second World War, many Cambridge mathematics dons were absent from the university serving at Bletchley Park and elsewhere. In spite of this, there remained a lively mathematical community in which Kilburn played a full part part.
    [Show full text]
  • Was the Manchester Baby Conceived at Bletchley Park?
    Was the Manchester Baby conceived at Bletchley Park? David Anderson1 School of Computing, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, PO1 3HE, UK This paper is based on a talk given at the Turing 2004 conference held at the University of Manchester on the 5th June 2004. It is published by the British Computer Society on http://www.bcs.org/ewics. It was submitted in December 2005; final corrections were made and references added for publication in November 2007. Preamble In what follows, I look, in a very general way, at a particularly interesting half century, in the history of computation. The central purpose will be to throw light on how computing activity at the University of Manchester developed in the immediate post-war years and, in the context of this conference, to situate Alan Turing in the Manchester landscape. One of the main methodological premises on which I will depend is that the history of technology is, at heart, the history of people. No historically-sophisticated understanding of the development of the computer is possible in the absence of an appreciation of the background, motivation and aspirations of the principal actors. The life and work of Alan Turing is the central focus of this conference but, in the Manchester context, it is also important that attention be paid to F.C. Williams, T. Kilburn and M.H.A. Newman. The Origins of Computing in Pre-war Cambridge David Hilbert's talk at the Sorbonne on the morning of the 8th August 1900 in which he proposed twenty-three "future problems", effectively set the agenda for mathematics research in the 20th century.
    [Show full text]
  • Oral History and Making the Computer Relevant Thomas Lean
    The Voice in the Machine: Oral History and Making the Computer Relevant Thomas Lean To cite this version: Thomas Lean. The Voice in the Machine: Oral History and Making the Computer Relevant. Interna- tional Conference on History of Computing (HC), Jun 2013, London, United Kingdom. pp.163-172, 10.1007/978-3-642-41650-7_16. hal-01455250 HAL Id: hal-01455250 https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01455250 Submitted on 3 Feb 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License The Voice in the Machine: Oral History and Making the Computer Relevant Thomas Lean British Library [email protected] Abstract: From the beginning computer history has often been more about technical developments than it has been about the social history of the computer and its effects. This paper describes how a greater attention to the social context of developments, representations of technology, the importance of users, software, and other topics, has presented a number of other ways to make computer history relevant rather than concentrating on the machine itself. This paper considers computer history through the medium of oral history, using interviews collected by National Life Stories at the British Library as part of An Oral History of British Science.
    [Show full text]
  • Core Magazine May 2001
    MAY 2001 CORE 2.2 A PUBLICATION OF THE COMPUTER MUSEUM HISTORY CENTER WWW.COMPUTERHISTORY.ORG A TRIBUTE TO MUSEUM FELLOW TOM KILBURN PAGE 1 May 2001 A FISCAL YEAR OF COREA publication of The Computer Museum2.2 History Center IN THIS MISSION ISSUE CHANGE TO PRESERVE AND PRESENT FOR POSTERITY THE ARTIFACTS AND STORIES OF THE INFORMATION AGE VISION INSIDE FRONT COVER At the end of June, the Museum will end deserved rest before deciding what to Visible Storage Exhibit Area—The staff TO EXPLORE THE COMPUTING REVOLUTION AND ITS A FISCAL YEAR OF CHANGE John C Toole another fiscal year. Time has flown as do next. His dedication, expertise, and and volunteers have worked hard to give IMPACT ON THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE we’ve grown and changed in so many smiling face will be sorely missed, the middle bay a new “look and feel.” 2 ways. I hope that each of you have although I feel he will be part of our For example, if you haven’t seen the A TRIBUTE TO TOM KILBURN already become strong supporters in future in some way. We have focused new exhibit “Innovation 101,” you are in Brian Napper and Hilary Kahn every aspect of our growth, including key recruiting efforts on building a new for a treat. EXECUTIVE STAFF our annual campaign–it’s so critical to curatorial staff for the years ahead. 7 John C Toole FROM THE PHOTO COLLECTION: our operation. And there’s still time to Charlie Pfefferkorn—a great resource Collections—As word spreads, our EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CEO 2 CAPTURING HISTORY help us meet the financial demands of and long-time volunteer—has been collection grows, which emphasizes our Karen Mathews Chris Garcia this year’s programs! contracted to help during this transition.
    [Show full text]
  • E4. Catalogue of Historical Computer
    Version 1: 4th March 2016. Catalogue E, for box-files E1 – E4. Catalogue of historical computer documents donated by Professor D B G Edwards. Scope. These items, donated by Professor Edwards in December 2015, cover the design of computer systems within the University of Manchester, the people involved in the projects and the growth of a Department of Computer Science. A large number of photographs is included, both of equipment, of people and of buildings. The main period covered is from 1948 – 1988, with some additional material dating from 1935 and some up to 1998. Box-files E1 & E2 contain documents and manuals. Box-files E3 & E4 (catalogued from page 10 onwards below) contain photographs. Background. David Beverley George Edwards, known to colleagues as Dai, was born in Tonteg, South Wales in 1928. In 1945 he went to Manchester University to read Physics. In his third year he specialised in Electronics and came under the influence of Professor F.C. Williams. Dai graduated in Physics in July 1948. In September of that year he became a research student working under F.C. Williams in the Department of Electro-Technics on the expansion of the ‘Baby’ (SSEM) digital computer. He obtained his MSc in December 1949 and joined the University staff as an Assistant Lecturer. Dai remained a member of the academic staff all his working life, first within Electrical Engineering and then (from 1964) within the Department of Computer Science. He was promoted to Lecturer in 1954 and gained his PhD for the design and construction of MEG. In 1959 he became a Senior Lecturer, leading the engineering team for the MUSE/Atlas project.
    [Show full text]