14. Appendix A. Baby’s Conception: The Back Story

Turing, A.M. 1937. On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2 42 (1): 230–265.

Lavington, Simon. 1980. Early British Computers. Manchester University Press. This is out of print but has helpfully been made available at: http://​ed-thelen.​org/​comp-hist/​EarlyBritish.​html. The locations, the names of the resulting computers and the dates when the first British computers ran a program are: From 1946 onwards: at the National Physical Laboratory. (Pilot ACE, 1950); • From 1947 onwards: (i) at Cambridge University. (EDSAC, 1949). (ii) at Elliott’s Borehamwood Research Labs. (Elliott 152, 1950). (iii) at TRE Malvern. (TREAC, 1953). (iv) at the Post Office’s Dollis Hill Laboratory. (MOSAIC, 1953). (v) at Birkbeck College, London. (ARC/SEC/APE(X)C, 1948–52). • From 1948 onwards: at Manchester University. (SSEM 1948 & Mark I 1949). • From 1949 onwards, at the caterers J Lyons & Co., London. (LEO, 1951).

Proposed electronic calculator. A. M. Turing. 48 typed pages. Undated but assumed written at the end of 1945. This Report was presented as paper E881 at a meeting of the NPL Executive Committee held on 19th March 1946. Turing attended the meeting to explain his proposals, which were accepted ‘with enthusiasm’. The initial plans envisaged that ACE should be the Mathematics Division’s highest-priority project. Subsequent internal difficulties with the implementation of the computer’s storage and electronic circuitry led Sir Charles Darwin, the NPL Director, to seek help from external sources such as TRE, the Post Office’s Research Laboratory and the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester, all to no avail even though the ACE was promoted by Darwin as being “the highest priority of any work that was being done for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research”. DSIR funded NPL and similar national establishments. See for example Notes on a visit to the NPL to discuss the Automatic Computing Engine with the Director. R. A. Smith (Superintendent, TRE Physics Division), TRE Internal memo D4070, 25th November 1946.

Letter dated 8th February 1946 from Max Newman to John von Neumann. This is reproduced here: http://​www.​alanturing.​net/​turing_​archive/​archive/​m/​m14/​M14.​php.

Conversation with Professor D. B. G. Edwards, 17th April 2012. Professor Edwards explained that, in pursuit of his own research into early computing activity, he had been allowed access to confidential files in the Registrar’s Department, University of Manchester.

Turing’s ACE explanation, assumed to have been given to Newman and Good at their meeting with Turing at NPL in the summer of 1946, is held at the Newman Archive at St. Johns College, Cambridge: http://​www.​cdpa.​co.​uk/​Newman/​MHAN/​ box 5 folder 6 item 6, Outline account of computing machine ACE. (16 typed pages).

Huskey, H.D. 1947. The State of Computing in Britain and the US. 14 typed pages plus 3 pages of correspondence. See: http://​www.​alanturing.​net/​turing_​archive/​archive/​l/​l01/​l01.​php.

Interview of M. H. A. Newman, conducted by Dr. Chris Evans (NPL) in 1976. This is interview 15 in a series of interviews of computer pioneers sponsored by the Science Museum.

Appointments Diary for 1948, item 4-13-1 in the Newman Archive at St. Johns College Library, Cambridge. See the catalogue here: http://​www.​cdpa.​co.​uk/​Newman/​MHAN/​view-box.​php?​Box=​4. The diary is a Letts Pocket Diary, measuring about 4” × 3”. In the front and in the back are lists of the staff of the Mathematics Department at Manchester, for academic years 1947/48 and 1948/49.

Universal high-speed digital computers: a small-scale experimental machine. Proc. IEE, Vol. 98, Part 2, No. 61 Feb. 1951, pp. 13–28.

Internal memo dated 8th August 1945 from M. H. A. Newman to DD(A) [probably an administrative section within Bletchley Park].

Internal memo dated 8th November 1945 from M. H. A. Newman to Mr. Reiss [probably an administrator within Bletchley Park].

Letter dated 22nd December 1948 from M. H. A. Newman to Professor D. Brunt at the Royal Society. See NAHC/MUC/2/C/2.

Broadbent, T.E. 1998. Electrical Engineering at Manchester University; The Story of 125 years of Achievement. Published by The Manchester School of Engineering, University of Manchester. ISBN 0–9531203-0-9.

A good analysis of the unique nature of the ACE design is given in: Carpenter, B.E., and R.W. Doran. 1977. The Other Turing Machine. The Computer Journal 20 (3): 269–279. A diagram of Kilburn’s hypothetical computer, based on the general ACE structure, is in: Kilburn, T. 1947. A Storage System for use with Binary Digital Computing Machines. Typed foolscap document, consisting of 52 pages of text, 32 pages of diagrams and one page with three photos. A paper copy is held in Manchester—see NAHC/MUC/2/A1. For an electronic copy plus comments, see: http://​curation.​cs.​manchester.​ac.​uk/​computer50/​www.​computer50.​org/​kgill/​mark1/​report1947.​html.

In 1947 NPL sent a draft contract between NPL and the University of Manchester to F. C. Williams. The purpose was to get Williams’ group to help build NPL’s ACE computer. Williams declined the contract because: (a) he did not need additional funding for his own research; (b) the wording of the NPL contract appeared restrictive compared with normal academic practice; (c) Turing’s ACE design was incompatible with Williams’ own storage project. See: NAHC/MUC/1/B1a. Furthermore, Turing and Williams had clashed during the meeting at NPL with TRE staff in November 1946. A. M. Uttley, who was at this meeting, recalled in conversation with SHL that there was no love lost and that “sparks flew between Turing and FC”.

Letter dated 18th February 1948 from F. C. Williams to the TRE Director R. A. Smith. See: NAHC/MUC/1/B1a.

First IAS Report. 28th June 1946: “Prepared in accordance with the terms of Contract W-36-034-ORD-7481 between the Research and Development Service, Ordnance Department, US Army and the Institute for Advanced Study”. A Second edition is dated 2nd September 1947. See: http://​grch.​com.​ar/​docs/​p1/​Apuntes/​eng/​Logical%20​Design%20​of%20​an%20​Electronic%20​Computing%20​Instrument.​pdf.

A status report on the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory. M. H. A. Newman. A typed report prepared for the University of Manchester Senate Sub-Committee on the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory, 15th October 1948. See NAHC/MUC/2/C/2. Those present at this meeting included Newman, Blackett, Williams and “Mr. Turing by invitation”. This report includes some interesting points: (a) Confirms that Newman’s original plan was to build a machine based on the Princeton model, buying in a number of RCA Selectron tubes for the memory; (b) Confirms Kilburn as the designer of ‘the first automatic general-purpose computing machine to have actually worked’; (c) States that Kilburn is to be appointed as a staff member of the Computing Machine Laboratory from 30th November 1948 to 29th September 1951, with the status of University Lecturer. (d) Confirms that Princeton intends to switch to Williams Tubes; (e) States that a 3000 ft² temporary building should be erected near the existing Physics Building [in Coupland Street]. This would contain the machine (1200 ft²), workshop, staff rooms and would operate for three years until a much larger building could be constructed on the other side of Oxford Road [actually in Dover Street, which went eastwards from Oxford Road whereas Coupland Street went westwards], hopefully to be ready by 1953. More on the new Dover Street building is given in Chap. 13.

From the correspondence in NAHC/MUC/1/B1a it is clear that F. C. Williams and A. M. Uttley were in regular communication in 1947. For example there is a letter from FC to Uttley dated 1st April 1947 when FC tells Uttley of “our longest memory period so far is 4½ h during which 10⁹ regenerations were formed without error … this is quite the most promising result to date”. Uttley replied to this letter on 9th April 1947, saying that “Electronic Computing is now on the DCD programme as an MOS project … We start Research on Digital Computing on May 1st “.

From the correspondence in NAHC/MUC/1/B1a it is clear that F. C. Williams and A. M. Uttley were in regular communication in 1947. For example there is a letter from FC to Uttley dated 1st April 1947 when FC tells Uttley of “our longest memory period so far is 4½ h during which 10⁹ regenerations were formed without error … this is quite the most promising result to date”. Uttley replied to this letter on 9th April 1947, saying that “Electronic Computing is now on the DCD programme as an MOS project … We start Research on Digital Computing on May 1st”.

Carter, R.H.A., and A.M. Uttley. 1953. The Telecommunications Research Establishment Parallel Electronic Digital Computer, Chap. 10. In Faster than Thought, ed. B.V. Bowden. Published by Pitman.

First IAS Report. 28th June 1946: “Prepared in accordance with the terms of Contract W-36-034-ORD-7481 between the Research and Development Service, Ordnance Department, US Army and the Institute for Advanced Study”. A Second edition is dated 2nd September 1947. See: http://​grch.​com.​ar/​docs/​p1/​Apuntes/​eng/​Logical%20​Design%20​of%20​an%20​Electronic%20​Computing%20​Instrument.​pdf.

Kilburn, T., D. Morris, J.S. Rohl, and F.H. Sumner. 1968. A System Design Proposal. In Proceedings of IFIP Congress, 76–80, Edinburgh, Section D.

Kilburn, Tom. 1990. From Cathode Ray Tube to the Ferranti Mark I. Resurrection the Journal of the Computer Conservation Society (2).

Williams, F.C. 1975. Early Computers at Manchester University. The Radio & Electronic Engineer 45 (7): 327–331. Presented at a Royal Society Colloquium on 12th November 1974.

On 19th and 22nd August 1949 F. C. Williams gave two lectures in Canada at the National Research Council’s Atomic Energy project, Research division, Chalk River, Ontario. These lectures were typed up from a wire recording and bound as Report LT-24, 14th Sept. 1949, High speed universal digital computers. (28 typed pages and 16 figures). This Report essentially describes the CRT storage system, the SSEM and the factoring program. See NAHC/MUC/1/D5.

Bigelow, J. 1976. Computer Development at the Institute for Advanced Study. In International Research Conference on the History of Computing, Los Alamos, 10th–15th June 1976. The papers were later published in: Metropolis, N., J. Howlett, and G.-C. Rota (eds.). 1980. A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century. Academic Press. The IAS paper is pp. 291–310.

Williams, F.C., and T. Kilburn. 1949. A Storage System for use with Binary Digital Computing Machines. Proceedings of IEE 98 (Part 2, No. 30): 183 ff.