Abstract
What was it like in post-war Britain, before the arrival of the modern computer? How, in particular, did organisations carry out calculations and tabulations, analyses and predictions, before high-speed electronics came to their aid? When, in 1948, a small university research group came up with ideas for a new kind of computing machine, why did the government get excited and give the Ferranti engineering company a contract to turn the university prototype into a large production computer capable of solving problems of strategic importance to the nation? In this chapter we describe the seeds of innovation that bore fruit in the Manchester area, starting with a lively interaction between a small group of academics and an unsuspecting electrical engineering company founded seventy years previously. On the way, we cover the history of the Ferranti company and introduce the Ministry of Supply as the government organisation most interested in helping Ferranti take an early lead in computer manufacture.
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- 1.
(a) The Elliott Differential Analyser of Fig. 1.1 is described in: Ashdown, G.L., and K.L. Selig. 1951. A General Purpose Differential Analyser: Part I, Description of Machine. The Elliott Journal 1 (2): 44–48; (b) The background to this, and similar post-war DAs, is discussed in Chap. 4 of: Lavington, Simon. 2011. Moving Targets: Elliott-Automation and the Dawn of the Computer Age in Britain, 1947–67. Berlin: Springer. ISBN: 978-1-84882-932-9.
- 2.
(a) Royal Army Pay Corps: Electronic Computer Investigating Committee: Report of Working Party. Application of automatic data-processing to soldiers’ pay accounting. The War Office, August 1957. Also: Royal Army Pay Corps: Report of the Electronic Computer Investigation Committee. The War Office (F9), December 1957; (b) The wider background to this RAPC procurement is discussed in Chap. 9 of: Moving Targets (see b in Footnote 1).
- 3.
Lord Halsbury, who was the Director of the National Research Development Corporation from 1949 to 1959, made this oft-quoted remark in a lecture given in London sometime after his retirement. The exact date has yet to be determined.
- 4.
Patent figures have been extracted from relevant volumes of Index to names of applicants in connection with published complete specifications. This Index is published periodically by the UK Patent Office. This Ferranti analysis is discussed in more detail in Chap. 6 of Moving Targets (see b in Footnote 1).
- 5.
Report of a visit made by D. G. Prinz to USA in September 1948, on behalf of Ferranti. National Archive for the History of Computing (NAHC) document NAHC/PRI/C1a.
- 6.
There are many papers describing the Williams/Kilburn electrostatic storage scheme, for which the first patent was filed by Williams on 11th December 1946. Here are two of the early reports: (a) Kilburn, T. 1948. A Storage System for use with Binary Digital Computing Machines. Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester. A first version of this thesis with the same title was written as an internal report for TRE. This report was then circulated by the Dept. of Electrotechnics, University of Manchester, dated 1st December 1947. Several copies are known to have reached the USA; (b) Williams, F.C., and T. Kilburn. 1949. A storage system for use with binary digital computing machines. Proceedings of IEE 98 (Part 2, 30): 183.
- 7.
Copy of letter from Sir Ben Lockspeiser to Eric Grundy , 26 October 1948, giving Ferranti authority “to construct an electronic calculating machine to the instructions of Professor F. C. Williams”. National Archive for the History of Computing, document NAHC/FER/B3.
- 8.
Lavington, Simon. 1975. A History of Manchester Computers. 1st ed. Second edition published by the British Computer Society, 1998. ISBN: 0-902505-01-8. See also the history site of the School of Computer Science, University of Manchester: www.computer50.org/.
- 9.
Letter from R. A. Smith (TRE’s Superintendent Physics) to F. C. Williams, dated 25th November 1946. Smith proposes that ‘T. Kilburn and one other’ be seconded to Manchester University to work with Williams. The first ‘one other’ was Arthur Marsh but he soon asked to be returned to TRE because he apparently saw no future in computers. He was replaced by Geoff Tootill, who came to Manchester in September 1947. See also the interview of G. C. Tootill by Thomas Lean. British Library National Life Stories, reference C1379/02, 3rd Dec 2009–9th April 2010.
- 10.
Letter dated 3rd March 1999 from Sir Bernard Lovell to Dr. John Ponsonby (Jodrell Bank). Ponsonby had come across a rare copy of the Blue Book, a lengthy technical report entitled A steerable radio telescope sent to DSIR on 20th March 1951 in support of a grant for what was to become the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope. This particular copy of the Blue Book had been sent on 31st March 1951 by Patrick Blackett to F. C. Williams for comment. Lovell responded to Ponsonby’s find with some background history, including an assessment of Williams’ ability as a suitable referee of DSIR research applications.
- 11.
Newman, M.H.A. 1948. Status Report on the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory. Report prepared for a Senate Sub-committee of the University of Manchester, 15th Oct 1948. A re-typed copy is available as NAHC document NAHC/MUC/2/C/2.
- 12.
Copy of letter from Sir Ben Lockspeiser to Eric Grundy , 26 October 1948, giving Ferranti authority “to construct an electronic calculating machine to the instructions of Professor F. C. Williams”. National Archive for the History of Computing, document NAHC/FER/B3.
- 13.
Letter accompanying National Archive for the History of Computing document NAHC/FER/B3.
- 14.
Coombs, A.W.M. July & Oct 1955, Jan 1956, March 1953. An Electronic Digital Computer, Parts 1–4. Post Office E E Journal 48, 114, 137 & 212: 38–42; 49, 18, 126 (April & July 1956). Summary information also given in: Coombs, A.W.M. 1954. The Ministry of Supply Automatic Computer. In Automatic Digital Computation, the Proceedings of a Symposium held at NPL, Published by HMSO.
- 15.
A secret Admiralty contract for a real-time fire-control system, called MRS5 , had been given to Elliott’s Borehamwood Laboratory in the autumn of 1946. This contract resulted in the Elliott 152 digital computer, which ran a program under laboratory conditions in September 1950. Classified technical reports of this project exist in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. A description, based on these reports, is given in Chaps. 1 and 2 of Moving Targets (see b in Footnote 1). The Royal Navy did not, in the end, adopt MRS5 and instead chose an analogue Fly Plane system implemented by Ferranti. Ship-borne digital fire control did not go to sea until the end of the 1950s.
- 16.
Pollard, B.W. 1950. Application of Digital Computing Machines. Ferranti Journal 8 (4): 94.
- 17.
A secret Admiralty contract for a real-time fire-control system, called MRS5 , had been given to Elliott’s Borehamwood Laboratory in the autumn of 1946. This contract resulted in the Elliott 152 digital computer, which ran a program under laboratory conditions in September 1950. Classified technical reports of this project exist in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. A description, based on these reports, is given in Chaps. 1 and 2 of Moving Targets (see b in Footnote 1). The Royal Navy did not, in the end, adopt MRS5 and instead chose an analogue Fly Plane system implemented by Ferranti. Ship-borne digital fire control did not go to sea until the end of the 1950s.
References
Ashdown, G.L., and K.L. Selig. 1951. A General Purpose Differential Analyser: Part I, Description of Machine. The Elliott Journal 1 (2): 44–48.
Coombs, A.W.M. 1954. The Ministry of Supply Automatic Computer. In Automatic Digital Computation, the Proceedings of a Symposium held at NPL, Published by HMSO.
Coombs, A.W.M. (July & Oct 1955, Jan 1956, March 1953). An Electronic Digital Computer, Parts 1–4. Post Office E E Journal 48, 114, 137 & 212: 38–42; and 49, 18, 126 (April & July 1956).
Kilburn, T. 1948. A Storage System for use with Binary Digital Computing Machines. Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester.
Lavington, Simon. 1975. A History of Manchester Computers. 1st ed., NCC.
Lavington, Simon. 2011. Moving Targets: Elliott-Automation and the Dawn of the Computer Age in Britain, 1947–67. Berlin: Springer. ISBN 978-1-84882-932-9.
Newman, M.H.A. 1948. Status Report on the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory. Report Prepared for a Senate Sub-committee of the University of Manchester, 15th Oct 1948.
Pollard, B.W. 1950. Application of Digital Computing Machines. Ferranti Journal 8 (4): 94.
Williams, F.C., and T. Kilburn. 1949. A Storage System for Use with Binary Digital Computing Machines. Proceedings of IEE 98 (Part 2, 30): 183.
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Lavington, S. (2019). The Small Seeds of Innovation. In: Early Computing in Britain. History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15103-4_1
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