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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.
Wifi: patented! For shame australia. I am legitimately disgusted.
Well get fucked and use a captital A next time.
-- Australia
In 1949, mercury delay line memory was ok, but by 1955 it was hopelessly outdated.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.
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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Welcome back to the one day Trollfest where TechLeadNY has just been dismissed for a duck. Pretty piss, poor effort, really.
1000 Hz - you could come very close to hand-cranking it!
Dude, if you can come close to hand cranking something 1000/second you should really think about not masturbating so much.
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.
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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.
Yeah, the full term is "thermionic valve". This is the British expression for what Americans call a "vacuum tube". Though I'm American, the British term seems to better describe the device's function.
There's plenty of other stuff in there making up the total system weight: structural framework, power supplies, and of course the mercury delay line memories, which were basically big sealed tanks of mercury. It also seems to have had magnetic drum storage, another heavy component. And I doubt weight of the system was a major concern anyway, as long as the floor could support it.
<Richie> Welcome back to the one day Trollfest where TechLeadNY has just been dismissed for a duck. Pretty piss, poor effort, really.</Richie>
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Attacks.... Australia??? This guy must have snoozed through the shill orientation class.