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https://medium.com/predict/the-trailblazing-first-generation-computer-the-world-forgot-998362ff62d4>
"IN NOVEMBER 1949, CSIRO scientists in Sydney independently created what is now
recognised as only the fourth digital stored program computer in the world:
CSIRAC. It came hot on the heels of other first-generation computers created in
the UK and the US only a year earlier.
Using vacuum tubes instead of microchips, the noisy behemoth filled a room and
consumed enough electricity to power a suburban street. While paltry by today’s
standards, CSIRAC was a stunning achievement at the very dawn of the computer
age.
“It had a presence like Stonehenge, a scale that was impressive — big grey
cabinets filling a room, humming like a power station,” recalled Peter Thorne,
who, at the age of 19, began working on CSIRAC in the 1950s; he went on to head
up computer engineering at the University of Melbourne.
Before CSIRAC, a ‘computer’ was a job — someone who wrangled equations on a
mechanical calculator. Complex calculations would be split into many parts and
distributed to individual ‘computers’ — row after row of mathematics graduates
(mostly women) who would labour over arithmetic for hours, sometimes days, to
complete a single task.
“CSIRAC was 1,000 times faster than that, so it was like a super-computer in
its day,” Thorne said."
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
