<nettime> world's only surviving first generation computer

[Scot McPhee <ScotM@cruxfe.com>]

http://technology.news.com.au/news/4280542.htm


THE AUSTRALIAN
Our own HAL celebrates its 50th
By DAN TEBBUTT
23nov99

THE world's only surviving first-generation computer is celebrating its
50th birthday in Melbourne this week with a gathering of many of the
pioneers who launched Australia into the digital age. 

The 40sq m CSIRO Automatic Computer (CSIRAC) is being conserved and
reassembled for the first time since it was retired in 1964.

At the time it was the oldest working computer in the world, having been
in service since it was built from scratch in Sydney in November, 1949.

The CSIRO machine was Australia's only computer until 1956, when Sydney
University built a new system and CSIRAC was moved piece by piece to
Melbourne University.

The fathers of CSIRAC, the late Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard, will be
represented by many people who worked with the Phar Lap of computers. The
guest of honour will be Reg Ryan, CSIRO radio-physicist, who built the
computer's unique memory system using five-foot mercury tubes.

When Pearcey and Beard conceived and built their machine there were only
three other stored-program computers in the world.

"At a time when the technology was still very experimental, Pearcey and
Beard were leading the world with a computer built entirely from local
resources," Melbourne University associate professor in computer science
Peter Thorne said.

The first true computer was built in Manchester in June 1948, and the
first US machine came online only weeks before the Australian effort.

"The celebrated ENIAC machine was more like an electronic calculator than
a computer," Professor Thorne said.

While CSIRAC's hardware capabilities were paltry compared to even a modern
pocket calculator or laptop PC, the groundbreaking machine was used to
crunch numbers for big projects such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme,
Victoria's electricity grid and the ICI Building, Melbourne's first
skyscraper.

Powered by 2000 vacuum tube valves, the 2000kg dinosaur was capable of
processing around 1000 operations per second, equivalent to about
0.001MHz.

Programs were fed in via paper tape to run through the 2Kb main memory and
2.5K magnetic hard drive.

Cathode ray tubes were used to display the contents of memory cells and
registers.

"The best measure of CSIRAC's achievement is that it worked for 15 years," 
Professor Thorne said.

The machine even had a few games, and was probably the first computer to
play music. 

Museum Victoria and Melbourne University have received Australia Council
funding for a project to record some of the computerised music using a
software-based CSIRAC emulator, a simulated vacuum tube array and a
rebuilt loudspeaker.

The computer has been in the care of the state museum since it was
decommissioned.

"When we turned it off, we knew it was an historic machine," Professor
Thorne said.

He worked on CSIRAC as an undergraduate, cared for it as a weekend service
engineer and was present during the HAL-like shutdown sequence.

CSIRAC will go on public display for the first time in late 2000 when it
becomes a centrepiece of a permanent exhibit at the new Melbourne Museum. 


http://www.mov.vic.gov.au

http://csirac.cs.latrobe.edu.au/csirac.htm

http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/pubs/guides/csirac/


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