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LETTERS My Best Wishes to All Associated with SILLIAC's Anniversary Celebrations

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LETTERS My Best Wishes to All Associated with SILLIAC's Anniversary Celebrations LETTERS My best wishes to all associated with SILLIAC's anniversary celebrations. SILLIAC memories Harry Levy (BEcon '50), ACT. I was delighted to read the feature covering the birth of SILLIAC, Love at First Byte, by Messel's no-fuss maintenance Marie Jacobs (Sydney Alumni Magazine, It was a buzz to read the article about the Winter 2006). I was one of those privileged to building of SILLIAC (Sydney Alumni share in those activities in 1955/56, and my Magazine, Winter 2006). I was a student in recollections may be of interest. Physics in those days. A few hundred yards up from the University of I have just a few comments. Sydney, on the corner of Missenden Road, stood a large green building which housed Somebody floated an alternative name, the administrative headquarters of Bradford ABACUS for Adolph Basser Automatic Cotton Mills (later known as Bradmill Computer in the University of Sydney. A nice Industries). idea, but the name chosen was fine too. Most of the first computers had names (Univac, As the accountant of the company, I was Utecom, Csirac, etc). My favourite was HAL! selected to attend a course on the computer, and in particular, the lectures given by John I would doubt that SILLIAC contained any "old Bennett, who nominated his topic as radio valves" (as stated in your article, p12). I numerical method. think it more likely premium quality valves were used. Vacuum tube characteristics Two characteristics of the course required a change over time and eventually create fair degree of concentration. One was the errors. One tired tube could cause a exposure to binary arithmetic, which took me calculation to crash. a good deal of study to conquer. The other was the obtaining of data for input into I remember the picture of Professor Messel SILLIAC, which had to be taken to the with the soldering iron appeared in the Bradford teletype room and transferred onto Sydney Morning Herald in much bigger size punched paper tape. than in your article. The Herald paid a lot of attention to the Physics School at that time. In the subsequent 50 years, a fair proportion The idea of any academic, even the Prof, of my life was spent in the world of punched attacking the machine with a soldering iron cards. Now, as I sit at my keyboard, inputting must have caused mixed laughter and horror data into my PC, I marvel at the awkwardness among the real engineers. of the paper tape technique and the limits of the SILLIAC memory. Years later when the KDF9 had been obtained, there was a mixed arrangement for At the age of 82, I feel I could not live without computing. An IBM 7040 ran in one room and my computer. I keep a set of accounts on my the KDF9 with its array of noisy automatic PC, but I maintain a parallel set of accounts typewriters was across the corridor. The by hand, as I still have some doubts about the English machine used paper tape and the answers I may get from my computer. I am 7040 used Hollerith cards. Many jobs thrilled to think I participated in those demanded the output from one machine be pioneering years of computing, even if for me transferred to the other for further processing. it may be a case of not so much love at first Not convenient with the different data media. byte, but doubt at last byte! Meanwhile, SILLIAC sat alone down the corridor doing very little. The last I saw of it was a stained patch on the linoleum where it had stood. I was therefore somewhat surprised to read Finally, and by the way, the BYTE had not the article in Sydney Alumni Magazine been defined in SILLIAC's day. That came (Winter 2006) stating the SILLIAC was much later. "Australia's first electronic computer". Some David Paix (BSc '56, MSc '58) credit is due to the pioneering work of the team at the CSIR most of whom were Arts do not compute graduates of the University of Sydney. I was interested to read about SILLIAC in your most recent edition (Sydney Alumni When the University of Sydney decided to Magazine, Winter 2006). build SILLIAC in 1954, the CSIR computer project was terminated and the machine was In 1957 I was working as a clerical assistant offered to the University of Melbourne. with Major Power, Margaret, Dorothy, Ken Renamed CSIRAC, the computer was and Leila in the fees office of the University of operated for eight years between 1956 and Sydney while I continued my studies part- 1964 providing computing services to the time. Each year, the student numbers were university, CSIRO and the general crunched by faculty, course, gender, community. It is now preserved in the residence, and scholarship, and this was Museum of Melbourne. done by hand. Some interesting statistics of CSIRAC: size But 1957 was different. Leila and I spent 40 sq m, weight 2,500 kg, power consumption some time in the Physics building, keying 30,000 watts, memory capacity 2,000 bytes, information onto data tape. We sat in an speed 500-1,000 Hz. It was the first computer annexe across the hall from the main-frame, in the world to play music. using cumbersome tape machines which spat Jill Green (BSc '72) out tapes full of holes as we typed. These tapes were then fed in pairs into SILLIAC to obtain the results. All was going well until we fed Arts Irregular into the computer, and it Intelligent Debate spat the dummy. In the current Sydney Alumni Magazine (Winter 2006) Dr. Ankeny in her essay on It was a far cry from the spreadsheets and intelligent design concludes that a good databases we use now. But what an exciting outcome to the current debate would be that experience! we may all make intelligent choices about Robyn Jessiman nee Black (BA ’65) Wagga what to believe and who to trust. Yes indeed. Wagga, NSW But her essay fails in a number of respects to further our progress towards this objective. SILLIAC: Australia's First Computer? On 16 June 2006 I attended the 50th 1. The alternatives for choice. anniversary celebration of computing at the The alternatives are not what Dr Ankeny says University of Melbourne. Computing they are. For example, she strongly implies operations commenced in Melbourne with the that today's proponents of intelligent design arrival, on the back of a truck from Sydney, of and creationists are closely connected. Yet if Australia's first computer. This computer, the she were to update her view from that based CSIR Mark I, was created by Trevor Pearcey on William Paley in the early 19th century to and Maston Beard of the CSIR Division of that of Stephen C. Meyer in his February 9, Radiophysics (located on the Sydney 2006 article in the London Daily Telegraph - University campus) over the period 1947- Intelligent Design is not Creationism – she 1949. It was operated on the campus from might recognise that the issue has moved on. 1951 to 1955. The alternatives today, based on our hugely more detailed understanding of the complex For instance, we have not even the beginning features of living systems and the universe, of an idea about the nature of time, or of are that intelligent design best explains these mass, or of space. Nothing is what it seems features, or there is no design and these to be. features have come to be purely as a consequence of blind chance. I see no conflict between science, evolution theory, and the concept of intelligent design 2. Darwin's view. because they belong to different worlds. Dr. Ankeny fails to make clear that Darwin Intelligent design belongs, probably, to the had a theist view of existence/reality as a field of philosophy, and can't simply be whole. Reasonable exponents of both brushed off. alternatives recognise that evolutionary theory contributes significantly to our Two possibilities exist to explain life: understanding of reality. a) It happened by chance initially, and then evolution thereafter, or 3. Neither of the Alternatives are ex-post b) God put it all together, and then turned it Demonstrated Science. over to evolution for development. Dr. Ankeny's criticism of intelligent design as not being scientific is almost fatuous, and her I have no way of deciding between the two. conclusion that "intelligent design is not just Therefore I remain an agnostic. bad science, it is pseudoscience or junk Harold Taskis (BSc '45, DipEd '46) Helidon science" is little short of abuse. Clearly, Spa, Queensland debate about the two alternatives may best be categorised as what Kant in the 18th century described as metaphysics, rather Australian values than as physics, or 'real' science. Bronowski I cannot tell you how much I enjoy receiving takes this further in his 1978 The Origins of the Sydney Alumni Magazine and other Knowledge and Imagination with what he University of Sydney publications. They never calls natural philosophy, discussed in the light fail to inform, but also to present opinions that of scientific knowledge that has arisen in the stimulate thought. last 50 years. We now have at least a doubling of the further scientific knowledge In the letters pages of the Sydney Alumni arisen in the last 30 years. Intelligent debate Magazine (Winter 2006) you featured a letter from this starting point as to available from Charles Littrell, in which he suggests evidence and its pros and cons may best some distinctly Australian values. His further our understanding of a matter that is opinions certainly stimulated my thoughts.
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