Slashdot Mirror
Computer Pioneer Geoff Tootill Passed Away (theguardian.com)
"Computer pioneer Geoff Tootill passed away in October," writes long-time Slashdot reader tigersha. Born in 1922, Tootill began his career troubleshooting airborne radar systems during World War II, leading him to some pioneering research in the late 1940s. "He worked on the first computer that stored a program in main memory, as opposed to a paper tape, and actually had the opportunity to teach Alan Turing and debug one of Turing's programs." The Guardian remembers:
The computer could store just 32 instructions or numbers using a single cathode ray tube. The machine first worked in June 1948, taking 52 minutes to find the highest factor of 262,144, involving about 3.5 million arithmetic operations. The following year, Tootill transferred to Ferranti, the Manchester-based electrical engineering company, to specify a full-scale computer...the world's first commercially available computer.
That was the Ferranti Mark I, first released in 1951.
Tootill passed away at the age of 95.
That was the Ferranti Mark I, first released in 1951.
Tootill passed away at the age of 95.
Farewell Sir, and thank you for everything that you helped create.
The computer could store just 32 instructions or numbers using a single cathode ray tube.
About the same as our average current politician.
The machine first worked in June 1948, ...
[ see above ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Szilard invented the atom bomb (and got patent for it). He was friends with Einstein and shared a patent with him for a gas powered refrigerator. He was the one who wrote to Roosevelt warning him of the chance that the Nazi's could build such a bomb, but did not have the clout or notoriety of Einstein, so convinced Einstein to send the letter.
It's scary to think what would have happened if Hitler had waited a few more years before starting the war. Germany would have been invincible.
FTA: "52 minutes to find the highest factor of 262,144, involving about 3.5 million arithmetic operations"
I wonder what algorithm they were using. 262144=2^18, so the highest (prime) factor is 2, and almost any algorithm (such as the sieve of Eratosthenes) would try 2 first.
"It's scary to think what would have happened if Hitler had waited a few more years before starting the war."
Not really, for a LOT of reasons apart from the A-bomb that I won't go into.
As for the A-bomb, the Third Reich was extraordinarily disorganised, to a large extent because of Hitler's attitude of "divide and rule" towards both his generals and administration. He enjoyed setting ministries to squabble among themselves and never trusted the higher echelons of the Army or his scientists That anything ever got done was more in spite of him than because of him, and a tribute to the German nation.
Scientifically, Germany had "blown it's brains out" by devaluing non-military science and compelling a large number of it's top scientists to flee the country (the discoverers of fission, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch left Germany in 1938/9).
Eventually a research program was approved and funded, but it was split up among nine major institutes with no significant coordination. The project to develop the atom bomb was shelved in autumn 1942 and the only serious nuclear pile at Haigerloch never achieved anything near criticality. By 1943, Allied bombing had gravely damaged German production capacity and fuel shortages were becoming a worry.
By contrast, the American Manhattan Project was a massive, single-minded feat of production and coordination that employed >130,000 people and cost about $2 billion (say $23 billion in 2007 dollars) for an unguaranteed result.
Despite the phenomenal development of the V2/A4 rocket (which impressed Hitler hugely despite its negligible impact on the War), after 1938 Germany simply did did not have either the huge sums of money or the scientists to get anywhere near an A-bomb.
One can speculate that with a 1933 Chancellor as determined as, but less erratic, more sanguine and less anti-Semitic than Hitler, Germany could have developed a deliverable atomic bomb, perhaps by 1947. But then, a wiser Hitler would have avoided the War altogether (Germany was already booming by 1933) and German domination of Europe come 50 years earlier!
Mac