Classic Computer Question

From: Andy Holt <andyh_at_andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Wed Oct 16 09:29:01 2002

Information on the Manchester site suggests that the first computing Keele
had was a link to the 1905F in Manchester ... but this is later than the
date you note.

In the (late) 1960s UK Universities almost all had one of
  ICT (ICL) 1900 series (the majority)
  or 4100 series (I have a vague recollection that Keele was in this group)
  and a few System 4 (IBM 360 clone) (most of the SW Universities had this)

 There were still the Atlas & Atlas 2 computers in place in
   London, Manchester, & Cambridge (& Rutherford labs)

 Some KDF9s were still around including, I think, Oxford & Leeds. Possible a
Pegasus or two.

 A few had managed to beat the "buy British" policy thus
   CDC6600 at ULCC
   IBM 360/65 at UCL
   IBM 360/67 (NUMAC) at Newcastle
   IBM 7094 at IC

 There were some PDP10s - but mainly owned by well-funded departments rather
than the central university - and other PDPs

When I started work at City University a couple of years later the complete
list of digital computers in the University was approximately
  1 ICT 1905 (32K 24 bit word core, 3x4 Megacharacter (6-bit) disk drives)
  1 EAL 690 Hybrid computer (the digital part - EAI 640 - was similar to an
IBM 1130)
  1 PDP 11/20 (in computer science)
  1 or 2 Marconi process-control-type systems in automation engineering.
That was all (the Pegasus had been dismantled a couple of years earlier).

Andy

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin_at_classiccmp.org]On
> Behalf Of Huw Davies
> Sent: 16 October 2002 09:20
> To: cctalk_at_classiccmp.org
> Subject: Classic Computer Question
>
>
> OK, this is a long shot but with this group, you never know.
>
> I'd like to try to identify the first computer I saw "in the flesh"
> so to speak. This would have been 1965 or 1966 and it was at Keele
> University (in the UK).
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I would find this out? I've
> already tried sending e-mail to the computer centre at Keele a few years
> ago but didn't get very far.
>
> Whatever computer it is has a lot to answer for!
>
> Yes, I'm getting old but I was 10 or 11 at the time....
>
> Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies_at_kerberos.davies.net.au
> | "If God had wanted soccer played in the
> | air, the sky would be painted green"
>
>
Received on Wed Oct 16 2002 - 09:29:01 BST