Details

Type

Physical Object

Title

Deuce Memory Drum

Manufacturer

English Electric Company

Date

1959

Place Manufactured

UK

Identifying Numbers

model number	Deuce
serial number	NW 101/1333 NS 1234

Dimensions

23 x 15 x 10 1/2 in.

Description

A drum unit set into a rectangular metal base flanked by two handles. The drum stored 8K x 32 bit words on 256 tracks of 32 words each. The 16 read heads can be seen at the right of the drum- and the whole read head assembly can move to 16 positions. See other material on the Deuce. Used in the History of Storage Exhibition at the Museum of American Heritage, Palo Alto, Spring 2002. -- JAC 1/16/2002 The following added by Dag Spicer, 1/30/2002: Response from John Deane follows -----Original Message----- From: The Deanes <j3hk@tig.com.au> To: dagspicer@netcare.com <dagspicer@netcare.com>; Max Burnet <mburnet@nsw.bigpond.net.au> Date: Saturday, January 19, 2002 7:47 PM Subject: DEUCE drum specs Hello Dag & Max, Yes, I agree, rpm is not in the usual places. Robin Vowels wrote up a description of University of NSW's DEUCE (source of your drum) & he gave its "Magnetic Recording Drum" specs as Rotation speed 6,510 rpm Track read time 13 ms (for 32 words) Head positioning time 35 ms Total store 8,192 words 16 pairs of heads (read & write separately) could be positioned to 16 locations (ie 256 tracks in total). Diameter 4" (10 cm) Height 6" (15 cm) Head gap 0.001" (0.025 mm) Cheers, John Deane

Category

Memory: drum

Accession Number

X65.82

Credit

Gift of Murray Allen