The Manchester Computer: A Revised History Part 1: The Memory

The Manchester Baby, built by F.C. Williams and Tom Kilburn and operational in June 1948, was the first stored-program electronic computer. The Williams-Kilburn tube memory, pioneered in the Baby, was subsequently adopted in many first-generation computers, including the Princeton IAS machine and th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE annals of the history of computing 2011-01, Vol.33 (1), p.4-21
Main Author: Copeland, B Jack
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
A.M. Turing
Analysis
Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)
Babies
Bletchley Park
cathode-ray tube memory
Colossus
Computation
Computers
Electron tubes
Electronics
F.C. Williams
Hardware
History
I.J. Good
J. von Neumann
J.P. Eckert
M.H.A. Newman
Manchester
Manchester Baby computer
Manchester Mark I Computer
Moore School
Origins
Personnel
Princeton Computer
R&D
R.A. McConnell
Research & development
Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory
Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM)
Studies
T. Kilburn
Telecommunication computing
Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE)
Tubes (electronic)
Turing-Wilkinson Lecture Series
Williams tube
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Summary:The Manchester Baby, built by F.C. Williams and Tom Kilburn and operational in June 1948, was the first stored-program electronic computer. The Williams-Kilburn tube memory, pioneered in the Baby, was subsequently adopted in many first-generation computers, including the Princeton IAS machine and the IBM 701. Part 1 of this article provides an overview of the Manchester project and its personnel and documents the origins of the Williams-Kilburn tube.
ISSN:1058-6180
1934-1547
DOI:10.1109/MAHC.2010.1