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Erschienen in:
The Small Seeds of Innovation Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

2019 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

6. The AVRO Mark I* Installation at Chadderton

verfasst von : Simon Lavington

Erschienen in: Early Computing in Britain

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The illustrious background of A. V. Roe, the company that produced the Avro Lancaster bomber, is described. Although the company was based at Chadderton, just a couple of miles from the Moston birthplace of the Ferranti Mark I*, Avro was at first reluctant to take the plunge and order its own computer. Once the machine arrived, however, full and innovative use was made of its computing power. We describe the applications and the people who were involved, the company’s efforts in 1964 to donate its Mark I* to a museum, and the computing resources that followed the Mark I* at Chadderton and at Avro’s nearby plant at Woodford.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Into the Market
Nächstes Kapitel The Mark I* at Armstrong Siddeley, Ansty, Coventry
Fußnoten
1
Len Hewitt, e-mail exchange with the author, September 2015. Len joined Ferranti Gem Mill in mid-1955, then became the Ferranti maintenance engineer on the Avro Mark I* at Chadderton. He stayed at Chadderton for a year and left Ferranti in mid-1957 to maintain a Ferranti Pegasus computer at ICI Dyestuffs Division, Manchester.
 
2
Smith, Joan. M. 2016. Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton. Five-page typed personal recollections, copy available from SHL. Joan died in August 2017.
 
3
Delivery lists for all the major early British computers are given on the Computer Conservation Society’s Our Computer Heritage website—see: http://​www.​ourcomputerherit​age.​org/​.
 
4
Hawker Siddeley. 1966. News, Aviation Edition. 3 (1): 2.
 
5
Smith, Joan. M., Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton.
 
6
Smith, Joan. M., Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton.
 
7
The Avro eight degrees of freedom analogue computer. Reg Boor, January 2016. Two-page typed article sent to the author (SHL) on 4th January 2016. The career path of Reg Boor, who rose to be Head of Applied Aerodynamics and then Head of Aeroelastics within the company, offers an interesting reflection on post-war Britain. In an e-mail to SHL on 10th March 2016 Reg writes: “I enjoyed my career at Avro and have always thanked my “lucky stars” for such a career. I left high school at the age of 16 feeling I should earn money for my mother but after a 6 month hiatus I went back to school and got an application form from the careers master for a “Professional Engineer Apprenticeship” at Avro, which I obtained. This was 1946 and we were given a day off each week to study for HNC [Higher National Certificate, equivalent to today’s GCSE A Levels]. But, of course, by 1969 I was surrounded in the office by 1st Class honours and Ph.D. men so when the Open University started I studied with them immediately for a degree in Maths”.
 
8
Peter Teagle, e-mail message sent to SHL via Len Whalley on 16th December 2016.
 
9
This was most probably the same as the tabular system in use at Armstrong Siddeley Motors, Ansty, and at Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd.—see: Tabular Interpretive Programme. Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd., Filton, Bristol. A summary of the language is given in Chap. 15. The Tabular Interpretive Programme, TIP, was devised by the Mathematical Services group of Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd. in 1957. TIP was made available for the DEUCE Marks I, II and IIA, and the Ferranti Mark I* computers.
 
10
Sheila Cooper’s memories of working with a Ferranti Mark I* computer at Avro Chadderton. Transcript produced by Simon Lavington in April 2017, based on an audio interview of Sheila by Buxton’s local historian Vivienne Doyle recorded on 14th April 2016 and supplemented by telephone conversations and e-mails with Sheila in the spring of 2017 and with her daughter Judie Adnett.
 
11
Digital computer programmer’s handbook. Compiled by J. P. Morton, Design Office Computer Group, Report no. COMP/M/1008, A. V. Roe & Co. Ltd., Manchester. May 1955. Typed foolscap manual, 132 p. Bound in a soft black treasury-tag-back binder, approximately 1-in. thick with embossed ‘Avro’ logo on front. To quote from the Preface: “Chap. 6 contains accounts of the various routines in the Sub-routine Library, and will be added to as the library grows”. Chapter 6 in the first edition of the handbook consisted of 80 p, describing 29 subroutines. A few of these are dated, the dates lying in the range Nov. 1953–May 1954.
 
12
John O’Donnell. ‘phone conversation with SHL on 17th December 2015.
 
13
Smith, Joan. M., Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton.
 
14
Smith, Joan. M., Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton.
 
15
Hawker Siddeley., News, Aviation Edition.
 
16
The Avro eight degrees of freedom analogue computer. Reg Boor, January 2016. Two-page typed article sent to the author (SHL) on 4th January 2016. The career path of Reg Boor, who rose to be Head of Applied Aerodynamics and then Head of Aeroelastics within the company, offers an interesting reflection on post-war Britain. In an e-mail to SHL on 10th March 2016 Reg writes: “I enjoyed my career at Avro and have always thanked my “lucky stars” for such a career. I left high school at the age of 16 feeling I should earn money for my mother but after a 6 month hiatus I went back to school and got an application form from the careers master for a “Professional Engineer Apprenticeship” at Avro, which I obtained. This was 1946 and we were given a day off each week to study for HNC [Higher National Certificate, equivalent to today’s GCSE A Levels]. But, of course, by 1969 I was surrounded in the office by 1st Class honours and Ph.D. men so when the Open University started I studied with them immediately for a degree in Maths”.
 
17
Len Hewitt, e-mails to SHL dated 18th May 2016. See Footnote 1.
 
18
Johnson, M.H.(Harry). 2002. My Work with Computers from the Ferranti Mark I to the ICT 1900 (1952–1966). 84-page typed manuscript, sent to SHL in 2002. Archived at Manchester, see NAHC/SHL/FA1. Of particular relevance is Appendix E: Ferranti MkI* customers and an early venture into magnetic tape.
 
19
Joan Travis (neé Kaye), e-mail to SHL dated 25th October 2015. Joan joined Ferranti in April 1953 and became involved with the last six Mark I*s. She remembers that: “Generally, except for the Avro computer, I acted as a sort of engineers-mate (analogous to a plumbers-mate) for the design engineers when various ‘exotic’ peripherals (line printers or mag. tape) were being attached to the computers …. My involvement with the Avro computer was to help two programmers from Rome to use the Mark I* before they got their own”.
 
20
Len Hewitt, e-mails to SHL dated 18th May 2016. See Footnote 1.
 
21
Smith, Joan. M., Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton.
 
22
Stiff foolscap folder, dark cover, containing copies of Programme Bulletins issued from time to time by the Computer Group at A. V. Roe’s main factory at Chadderton near Manchester. A surviving example folder, deposited at the Archive of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists in London, lists the descriptions of programs numbered 50–142. The exact date-range of these descriptions is not certain but includes the period 11th August 1955 to 1st November 1957.
 
23
Hawker Siddeley., News, Aviation Edition.
 
24
Manchester University computer Mk I. Result of enquiries made regarding the whereabouts of the first Ferranti Mk I computer. One-page typed internal memo dated July 1965, assumed to have been written by the Ferranti Archivist at that time. To this document is stapled a two-page addendum entitled Mk I* computer at Leicester Museum. This is undated but one can infer that it was written by the Ferranti Archivist (C. J. (Charles) Somers?) sometime between 1973 and 1975. These three pages are currently held in the Ferranti Archive at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
 
25
Manchester University computer Mk I. Result of enquiries made regarding the whereabouts of the first Ferranti Mk I computer. One-page typed internal memo dated July 1965, assumed to have been written by the Ferranti Archivist at that time. To this document is stapled a two-page addendum entitled Mk I* computer at Leicester Museum. This is undated but one can infer that it was written by the Ferranti Archivist (C. J. (Charles) Somers?) sometime between 1973 and 1975. These three pages are currently held in the Ferranti Archive at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
 
26
Page 4 of the National Archive for the History of Computing’s November 1999 Picture Catalogue has the entry: Ferranti Mark I Star, “rediscovered” near Leicester, 1972. (18 photographs). Unfortunately, by 2015 the NAHC was unable to find its Picture Collection.
 
27
The author (SHL) believes that the date of the meeting at Leicester was in 1974. Unfortunately, enquiries at the Leicester Museum of Technology and at the National Museums Scotland (the successor to the Royal Museum of Scotland) have not yielded any documentary evidence whatsoever.
 
28
Manchester University computer Mk I. Result of enquiries made regarding the whereabouts of the first Ferranti Mk I computer. One-page typed internal memo dated July 1965, assumed to have been written by the Ferranti Archivist at that time. To this document is stapled a two-page addendum entitled Mk I* computer at Leicester Museum. This is undated but one can infer that it was written by the Ferranti Archivist (C. J. (Charles) Somers?) sometime between 1973 and 1975. These three pages are currently held in the Ferranti Archive at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
 
29
Gordon Bell, Vice president of Engineering at Digital Equipment Corporation and co-founder with his wife Gwen of the Computer Museum, Boston, Massachusetts, visited Manchester University in 1982. They exchanged historic computer artefacts with the Department of Computer Science. The Computer Museum at Boston was dissolved in 2000, the Boston artefacts being transferred to the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.
 
30
When the author (SHL) left Manchester to become Professor of Computer Science at the University of Essex in 1986, his Manchester colleagues presented him with a Mark I* logic door and a Williams Tube unit. These units were moved to the Department of Computer Science at Essex and displayed in a suitable case. On the instructions of professor D. B. G. Edwards the logic door had been re-painted before it left Manchester—better than pigeon droppings but unfortunately in a slightly different colour from its original. SHL retired from Essex in 2002. Five years later the Essex Department was planning to move out of the area in which the Mark I* artefacts were displayed and, anxious for their long-term preservation, SHL arranged to donate the artefacts to the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.
 
31
Manchester University computer Mk I. Result of enquiries made regarding the whereabouts of the first Ferranti Mk I computer. One-page typed internal memo dated July 1965, assumed to have been written by the Ferranti Archivist at that time. To this document is stapled a two-page addendum entitled Mk I* computer at Leicester Museum. This is undated but one can infer that it was written by the Ferranti Archivist (C. J. (Charles) Somers?) sometime between 1973 and 1975. These three pages are currently held in the Ferranti Archive at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
 
32
Avro’s Mach 3.5 tunnel – a new intermittent blow-down facility. Flight Global, 11th July 1958, pages 34 & 35. See: https://​www.​flightglobal.​com/​pdfarchive
 
33
Smith, Joan. M., Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton.
 
34
E-mail from Ray Oates to SHL, on 13th January 2016.
 
35
E-mail from David Joy to SHL, on 19th January 2016.
 
36
E-mails from Gillian Mills to SHL, on 6th and 7th January 2016.
 
37
E-mail from Reg Boor to SHL, on 11th January 2016.
 
38
E-mail from Reg Boor to SHL, on 11th January 2016.
 
39
Smith, Joan. M., Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton.
 
Literatur
Hawker Siddeley. 1966. News, Aviation Edition. 3 (1): 2.
Johnson, M.H.(Harry). 2002. My Work with Computers from the Ferranti Mark I to the ICT 1900 (1952–1966).
Smith, Joan. M. 2016. Early Computing in the Aircraft Industry: Avro’s at Chadderton.
Metadaten
Titel
The AVRO Mark I* Installation at Chadderton
verfasst von
Simon Lavington
Copyright-Jahr
2019
Buch
Early Computing in Britain

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15102-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-15103-4

Copyright-Jahr: 2019

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15103-4_6