Tom Kilburn

Tom Kilburn

Tom Kilburn CBE (born August 11, 1921 in Dewsbury , Yorkshire , † January 17, 2001 in Manchester ) was a British computer pioneer.

Kilburn studied mathematics at Cambridge University , where he graduated with honors in 1942. He then worked in the group of Frederic Calland Williams at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in Malvern on radar development during World War II .

In 1946 he went to the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Manchester , but stayed in contact with Williams at TRE and together with Geoff Tootill they developed the Williams tube in 1947 , which was used as electronic memory in many early computers (it could store 2048 bits). In Manchester, too, they used the tube for the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), also known as Baby . It was finished in 1948 and was the first electronic computer with a stored program. Work continued in the development of the Manchester Mark I (1949) and in collaboration with Ferranti Ltd. in the Ferranti Mark I computer, which was released in February 1951. Before UNIVAC it was the first commercially sold computer - nine copies were delivered. In 1954 a faster version with floating point arithmetic followed and experiments with transistorized computers were undertaken (1953, 1955). In 1956 this led to the MUSE project of a transistorized computer with magnetic core memory and 1 MIPS power. In 1959 Ferranti also took part, which led to the ATLAS , which went into operation in 1962. Six Atlas computers were built (three of them in a limited version).

In 1964, the university's computer group became the Faculty of Computer Science and Kilburn became a professor. In 1966 he began the project of the MU 5 computer, which did not lead to a commercial product, but whose architecture was partially adopted in ICL's 2900 series (to which Ferranti's computer division now belonged). The MU 5 went into operation at the university in 1972 and was the last mainframe computer developed at the university. Kilburn retired in 1981.

In 1965 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society , whose Royal Medal he received in 1978, in 1982 he received the Computer Pioneer Award of the IEEE and in 1973 he was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE). In 1971 he received the W. Wallace McDowell Award and in 1983 the Eckert-Mauchly Award from ACM and IEEE.

Web links

• Biography at computer50.org (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Maurice V. Wilkes , Hilary J. Kahn: Tom Kilburn CBE FREng. August 11, 1921 - January 17, 2001 . In: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . tape 49 , December 1, 2003, p. 283-297 , doi : 10.1098 / rsbm.2003.0016 (English). - ( rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org PDF, 17 pages, with picture).
2. ↑ Why Williams-Kilburn Tube is a Better Name for the Williams Tube ( Memento of the original from June 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on computer50.org (English). 
3. ↑ Tom Kilburn, The Computer Conservation Society (Ed.): From Cathode Ray Tube to Ferranti Mark I. In: Computer Resurrection. Volume 1, No. 2, 1990, ISSN  0958-7403 .