14th of November 2024 |
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75th anniversary of CSIRAC |
A celebration is being held today to mark the 75th anniversary of
Australia's first stored-program computer, the CSIR Mk1 (later CSIRAC),
which ran its first program in November 1949.
Also being commemorated is the 50th anniversary of
the computing service and network, which became Csironet.
CSIRAC was a ground breaking machine in many respects:
it was the first computer to play electronic music,
the first to do numerical weather forecasting,
and was so well engineered that it had a productive working life into the 1960s.
CSIRAC is the only intact first-generation computer surviving anywhere in the
world and is on permanent display at the Museum of Melbourne.
Internationally, the CSIR Mk1 was the fifth electronic stored program computer ever developed. The machine was officially opened in 1951 and used to solve problems both for the Radiophysics Laboratory and outside organisations. It was decommissioned by CSIRO in 1955 and shipped to Melbourne, where it was recommissioned by the new Computation Laboratory at the University of Melbourne in 1956 and renamed CSIRAC. The image above shows Trevor Pearcey, one of the designers of CSIRAC, operating the machine. |