Manchester Mark I.

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Manchester Mark I , also called Manchester Automatic Digital Machine ( MADM ), was a British tube computer that was constructed at the University of Manchester in 1948/49 .

history

The "father" of modern computers, Alan Turing , taught at the University of Manchester. In 1948 his ideas resulted in the Small-Scale Experimental Machine , the first computer based on the Von Neumann architecture . This was the prototype of the Manchester Mark I, which was designed by Frederic Calland Williams and Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester. A drum memory was used as data storage device , so-called Williams tubes were used as storage medium for programs , which proved to be extremely maintenance-intensive and sensitive. Nevertheless, Tom Kilburn was able to demonstrate the functionality of the calculator: on June 21, 1948, he wrote the first 17-line program to calculate the highest factor of a number.

From the Manchester Mark I, the British company Ferranti developed the Ferranti Mark I computer , which was the second commercially available universal computer after the Zuse Z4 . It was first delivered in February 1951 shortly before the UNIVAC I . In 1950 Alan Turing was able to calculate 1104 zeros of the Riemann ζ-function on the computer.

Trivia

The mathematician couple Mary Lee Woods and Conway Berners-Lee , whose son Tim Berners-Lee later invented the Hypertext Markup Language and thus became the founder of the World Wide Web , was involved in the development of the Manchester .

literature

  • Simon H. Lavington: Early British Computers . Manchester University Press, 1980, ISBN 0-932376-08-8 .

Web links