Title
CSIRAC - One of the Only Intact First Generation Computers Left on the Planet, lecture by David DemantCatalog Number
102695050Type
Moving imageDescription
From abstract: " The fourth computer in the world, CSIRAC (pronounced 'sigh-rack') (1949 – 1964) was designed and built in Australia. It made its first successful test run in November 1949. CSIRAC is derived from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Automatic Computer. An international icon of the digital age, CSIRAC is the only intact first-generation computer surviving anywhere in the world.CSIRAC’s story began in 1936, when British mathematician Alan Turing described his idea for a computing machine capable of solving any numerical problem.
The first steps to building such a machine were undertaken during the Second World War (1939–45). Spurred on by military needs, British researchers built huge electro-mechanical calculators and electronic machines to decipher secret German codes. At the same time in the United States, a series of enormous machines was constructed to solve complex mathematical problems, including calculating the trajectories of artillery shells.
After the war, scientists and engineers developed Turing’s concept into the idea of a stored-program computer. In this versatile machine, both programs and data could be entered as a digital code (0s and 1s), and the programs could make decisions, based upon the current state of the data, and draw upon further sub-programs if required.
The honor of building the first modern computer went to the British, when ‘Baby’ computed its first result on 21 June 1948, in Manchester.
During this period, a young English scientist in Sydney had already been planning the development of a machine to bring Australia into the computer age…
Websites provided during David Demant's lecture:
-CSIRAC, Museum Victoria
-CSIRAC, University of Melbourne
-Computation Library, CSIRAC Emulator
-CSIRAC's Music ."