Manchester Mark I.
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
- 60 years ago: The "baby" is calculating
- The Manchester Mark I (Engl.)
- Early computers at Manchester University in RESURRECTION The Bulletin of the Computer Conservation Society ISSN 0958-7403 Volume 1 Number 4 Summer 1992 (Engl.)
- A simulator of the Manchester Mark I, executing Christopher Strachey's Love letter algorithm from 1952 (Engl.)
- Simon H. Lavington: Manchester Computer Architectures, 1948-1975 . In: IEEE (Ed.): IEEE Annals of the History of Computing . 15, No. 3, Jul.-Sept. 1993, pp. 44-54. doi : 10.1109 / 85.222841 . (engl.)
- Manchester Mark I.