's Automatic Computing Engine The Master Codebreaker's Struggle to Build the Modern

Edited by B. Jack Copeland

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Contents

List of Photographs xvi

Contributors xvii

Introduction 1 B. Jack Copeland

Part I The National Physical Laboratory and the ACE Project

1. The National Physical Laboratory 15 Eileen Magnello

2. The creation of the NPL Mathematics Division 2 3 Mary Croarken

3. The origins and development of the ACE project 3 7 B. Jack Copeland

4. The Pilot ACE at the National Physical Laboratory 93 James H. Wilkinson

Part II Turing and the History of Computing

5. Turing and the computer 107 B. Jack Copeland and Diane Proudfoot

6. The ACE and the shaping of British computing 149 Martin Campbell-Kelly

7. From Turing machine to 'electronic brain' 173 Teresa Numerico Contents

Part III The ACE

9. The Pilot ACE instruction format 209 Henry John Norton

10. Programming the Pilot ACE 215 /. G. Hayes

11. The Pilot ACE: from concept to reality 223 Robin A. Vowels

12. Applications of the Pilot ACE and the DEUCE 265 Tom Vickers

13. The ACE Test Assembly, the Pilot ACE, the Big ACE, andtheBendixGis 281 Harry D. Huskey

14. The DEUCE—a user's view 297 Robin A. Vowels

15. The ACE Simulator and the Cybernetic Model 331 Michael Woodger

16. The Pilot Model and the Big ACE on the web 335 Benjamin Wells

Part IV Electronics

17. How valves work 341 David 0. Clayden

18. Recollections of early circuits 345 Maurice Wilkes

19. Circuit design of the Pilot ACE and the Big ACE 349 David 0. Clayden

XIV Contents

Part V Technical Reports and Lectures on the ACE 1945-47

20. Proposed electronic (1945) 369 Alan M. Turing

21. Notes on memory (1945) 455 Alan M. Turing

22. The Turing-Wilkinson lecture series (1946-7) (edited with an introduction by B. Jack Copeland) 459 AlanM. Turing and James H. Wilkinson

2 3. The state of the art in electronic digital computing in Britain and the United States (1947) 529 Harry D. Huskey

Index 541

xv