Hi,
"James B. DiGriz" <jbdigriz_at_dragonsweb.org> said;
> Stan Barr wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > "James L. Rice" <jrice_at_texoma.net> said;
> >
> >
> >>Just out of curiosity, what was available in 1954? I probably coulfdn't
> >>afford the power and a/c for all of the vacuum tubes.
> >
> >
> > The Ferranti Mercury for one.
> >
> > Ferranti were experimenting with germanium transistors in computer
> > circuits around that time - or possible a year or two later.
> > Research that led to the Atlas, the fastest computer of its era...
>
> One year later, 1955, you have the TRIDAC, an analog aeronatical
> simulator that is claimed to be the first computer to use transistors.
>
> Did Ferranti have anything to do with that project? There's only sketchy
> information on the web about it that I could find with google.
It wouldn't surprise me. Manchester University were early pioneers in
semiconducer applications. Ferranti were closely associated with them,
and Ferranti were heavily involved in military and aviation work.
See:
http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/biganalog.html
Ferranti were limited to convential alloy drift germanium transistors as
they couldn't persuade anyone to manufacture ones designed for digital
use. The Atlas used OC170s, which were designed for radio use, running
at 10MHz IIRC. Floating point multiply in 4.97 microseconds which was
pretty quick at the time!
I dismantled a Ferranti board circa 1962/3 to recover the transistors...
wish I'd kept the board now ;-(
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb_at_dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!
Received on Thu Apr 04 2002 - 14:37:23 BST