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Looking Back At Australia's First Digital Computer
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.
"a serial bus that transferred one bit at a time." .. good one.
"Like all other first-generation computers, CSIRAC had its own unique design. Its programs had to be developed from scratch. To do so, users needed to know the workings of the machine, as well as how to convert instructions into software it could understand." ... that's all we get? I wouldn't exactly call that informative... this is Slashdot, not Fox News.
Groan,
A serial bus can be more than one bit wide, but never mind....
Did they patent any of their wonderful 'discoveries' so that they could leech off of others for decades? Or did Australians not figure that scam out until later?
Packet switching: not patented
TCP/IP: not patented
Wireless networking: not patented
WWW: not patented
Wifi: patented! For shame australia. I am legitimately disgusted.
It is a serious computer - it has a physical keyboard.
1000 Hz - you could come very close to hand-cranking it!
sPh
In 1949, mercury delay line memory was ok, but by 1955 it was hopelessly outdated.
I'm pretty surprised they didn't retrofit with core memory at some point, but then again, the rats nest of wiring in those photos doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the upgradeability of the system.
Please note CSIRAC was developed by the CSIRO. Yes this is the same organisation that some people have unfairly labelled as a patent troll regarding their licensing claims over technology they developed in relation to Wi-Fi. The CSIRO is a wonderful organisation that Australians should rightfully feel very proud of as they have long rich history of developing technologies that push the boundaries of science and benefit humanity. Take a look at http://www.csiropedia.csiro.au/display/CSIROpedia/Achievements+by+decade to see the great volumes of innovation and excellent achievements of the CSIRO.
Disclaimer: I work at the CSIRO and I feel immensely privileged to work in an organisation that not only developed CSIRAC, but is devoted to advancing society through a multitude of diverse cutting edge scientific research endeavours.
Ghana's First Combustion Engine!
Remembering Bangalore's First TV Station!!
Behind-The-Scenes at New Zealand's First Nuclear Reactor!
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In 1955, it was the first computer in the world to play music. Coincidentally, 1955 was the first time the RIAA tried suing a university.... for 1 million dollars!
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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.
I have sitting right in front of me a copy of:
University of Melbourne
Computation Laboratory
Programming Manual
for the Automatic Electronic Computer
CSIRAC
(based upon papers by T.Pearcey and G.W.Hill)
August 1959
It's only 36 pages long, but is a fascinating read describing the internals of the computer as well as source code for things like division, sin and other fundamental things. I only have it because a company I was working for in the late '80s was about to throw it out in the trash and I walked past at the right time and grabbed it.
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Why not play with the emulator now CSIRAC Emulator Very cool !
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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 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.
the main system comprised nine steel cabinets containing 2000 valves that weighed over 7000kg
By my math that's about 14000 metric tons in valves alone. That's 80% of the displacement of the HMS Dreadnought, the first modern battleship.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't think God hates trigonometry. Nor does God hate the 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet. But God allegedly does hate Sparlock the Warrior Wizard.
In case someone reading the article is too young to recognize the term, a "valve" is an electron tube, one of those things that would sometimes have to be replaced in the back of a radio or TV set. Yes, they got quite hot and any large array of them required special cooling. Even a radio or TV set could warm a room.
The photos are interesting.
In keeping with the traditions of most tech oriented sites, the comments rapidly devolve into political rants and pro/anti Apple statements.
Have gnu, will travel.
> weighed over 7000kg
Actually, it weighed over 15400 lbs.
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One thing I've never understood is why these early computers (apparently) used power-hungry standard vacuum tubes, requiring huge cooling systems, rather than the vacuum tubes used in portable radios.
In the 1930s/40s - not sure when - battery-operated radios (portable for going to the beach, as well as non-portable for people who had no electricity before rural electrification) were common. These had vacuum tubes with a filament voltage of 1.1-1.5VDC at maybe 50mA; the filament served as the cathode to conserve power. The B+ battery was anywhere from 22.5V to 90V and, because they were expensive, were expected to last a long time. The tubes had numbers of the form 1xx, like 1S5 (a pentode/diode).
So 2000 of these would use only about 150 watts for the filaments, which is less than many modern desktops. I don't have a number for the B+ power consumption. I vaguely recall from a schematic I saw ages ago that there were high-valued resistors, maybe around 10K-100K ohms, in series with some of the plates in the low-level signal circuits, so it might not have been very much. Maybe someone else knows.
Of course higher-power tubes might be needed to drive the I/O such as relays etc., but it seems the main logic circuitry could have been relatively low power.
The active components are valves, they have 2000 of them, and the thing weighs 7000kg. That's 3.5 kg per valve. Valves used as digital switches. Sounds like the design is not particularly weight-efficient.
Interesting fact: The micro that runs the blinkenlights on the CSIRAC panel these days has more grunt than the original computer. The things you learn at Linuxconf...
Vik :v)
Reliability was the highest priority among first-generation computer designers when choosing radio tubes (also called valves). J. P. Eckert was co-designer of the ENIAC, which was the first thing that might be called a working computer. Eckert spent a lot of engineering time on tube reliability. He selected tubes that seemed especially long-lasting and likely to work correctly out of the box. He drove them with circuits that treated them as gently as possible: lower voltages to preserve filaments, for example. While I have no knowledge of the relative reliability of compact tubes compared to full-sized ones, I'd have to guess that the smaller tubes were significantly less reliable. If the average tube life is 2,000 hours, then a 2,000 tube machine won't run for very long between tube replacements. ENIAC had over 17,000 tubes.
Image #14 is labeled as a "console teleprinter." It is really a storage drum, which was a a geometric alternative to the disk drive. Drums had a row of fixed-location heads for recording and playback. There was one head per track, which eliminated the moving arm. I once had a similar drum from an IBM 610 "calculator." It weighed about 30 pounds and stored 1,200 BITS. Perfect doorstop.