[AccessD] OT: "Baby Machine" 60 years today

Well spotted, Gustav.  I was at the celebration last night at Manchester
University.  

I am too young to have had anything to do with the original, but did get my
first program working on the Ferranti Mark 1* just over 46 years ago.  Even
integer division (no floating-point at all!) had to be programmed, yet the
machine I used spent much of its time doing matrix arithmetic, calculating
the stresses and strains in an aircraft wing during take-off.

I also used a powerful successor, Atlas, at MU, when the Atlas Bureau
Service first opened in (?)January 1963;  I was refining a technique for
finding the roots of complex transcendental functions - just in case you
were about to ask.  One of the novel features of Atlas was the One-Level
Store (virtual memory), 'invented' many years later by IBM.

Hey ho.
John


-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: 21 June 2008 15:35
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] OT: "Baby Machine" 60 years today


Hi all

See the introduction to the forerunner of all modern computers, Baby
Machine, which ran a stored program 60 years ago at the University of
Manchester, UK.

And listen to music played by the Ferranti Mark 1 computer, a commercial
version of the Baby Machine. 

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7458479.stm 

/gustav


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