Looking Back At Australia's First Digital Computer 88
An anonymous reader writes "Sometimes, it's the oldest machines that are the most fascinating. PC & Tech Authority has posted this gallery of photos of the first automatic electronic stored-program computer in Australia and one of the first in the world — CSIRAC. The photos show a machine massive in size — the main system comprised nine steel cabinets containing 2000 valves that weighed over 7000kg. Using valve technology and World War II radar systems as a starting point, the machine was used for various purposes including weather forecasting, forestry, loan repayments and building design. It boasted a 1000Hz memory clock and a serial bus that transferred one bit at a time. The system generated so much heat, cool air needed to be blown up through the cabinets from the basement below. In addition to being Australia's first computer, it is also said to have been the first computer to play digital music anywhere in the world. When CSIRAC was turned off for the last time, a witness described it as 'like something alive dying.'" Museum Victoria has some short but informative pages about CSIRAC, too, including this one about programming the thing, and another about the dangers and annoyances of working on it.
CSIRAC @ Caulfield (Score:3, Informative)
Interestingly, all the CSIRAC history forgets to mention it was located at Chisholm Institute of Technology's Caulfield campus (now Monash) for a long time as a display of one of the earliest computers ever made. I worked there and had the keys into the display, I now wish I'd added a bit of graffiti to the mercurary delay lines.
Re:mercury delay (Score:5, Informative)
I think the first post war British computer was developed by Lyons [leo-computers.org.uk], a food retailer/wholesaler/manufacturer. If memory serves, the British Government of the day rented it for batch jobs. :-)
There's a good book about it, A Computer Called Leo: Lyons Tea Shops, and the worlds first office computer [harpercollins.co.uk].
More on its history (Score:4, Informative)
There is a book about it :
McCann, D. and Thorne, P. 2000. The Last of the First: CSIRAC: Australia's First Computer. Department of Computer Software Engineering, The University of Melbourne.
Too bad there is no ISBN so I have no idea where to get a copy outside of the Melbourne Museum where the machine is currently pretending to work.
In the second picture [pcauthority.com.au] you can see a wood case with boxes. That is its /lib and the smaller box is its /usr/local/lib. There are paper tapes inside cardboard boxes with libraries of functions such as multiply integer and real square root.
Its "assembly language" sort of looked like "(D0)->H1" for save 10 input bits into H. That was later changed to "0 D HL". "103 -> S" was changed to "3 7 K S" which is jump to address 103 or Jump 3x32+7. Of course there was no assembler in the early days so it was all punched using tables.
The mercury delay lines are interesting. You can put about half a kbit in one tube but you have to keep refreshing it as the sound of a bit goes from one end to the other and then gets regenerated.
Re:Wow, that *is* massive. (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think the valves weighed 7000kg EACH.