|
The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers, developed at the Victoria University of Manchester from the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM) or "Baby" (operational in June 1948). It was also called the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine, or MADM. Work began in August 1948, and the first version was operational by April 1949; a program written to search for Mersenne primes ran error-free for nine hours on the night of 16/17 June 1949. The machine's successful operation was widely reported in the British press, which used the phrase "electronic brain" in describing it to their readers. That description provoked a reaction from the head of the University of Manchester's Department of Neurosurgery, the start of a long-running debate as to whether an electronic computer could ever be truly creative. The Mark 1 was to provide a computing resource within the university, to allow researchers to gain experience in the practical use of computers, but it very quickly also became a prototype on which the design of Ferranti's commercial version could be based. Development ceased at the end of 1949, and the machine was scrapped towards the end of 1950, replaced in February 1951 by a Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer. The computer is especially historically significant because of its pioneering inclusion of index registers, an innovation which made it easier for a program to read sequentially through an array of words in memory. Thirty-four patents resulted from the machine's development, and many of the ideas behind its design were incorporated in subsequent commercial products such as the and 702 as well as the Ferranti Mark 1. The chief designers, Frederic C. Williams and Tom Kilburn, concluded from their experiences with the Mark 1 that computers would be used more in scientific roles than in pure mathematics. In 1951, they started development work on Meg, the Mark 1's successor, which would include a floating point unit. ==Background== (詳細はAlan Turing published a definition of a theoretical "universal computing machine", a computer which held its program on tape, along with the data being worked on. Turing proved that such a machine was capable of solving any conceivable mathematical problem for which an algorithm could be written.〔.〕 During the 1940s, Turing and others such as Konrad Zuse developed the idea of using the computer's own memory to hold both the program and data, instead of tape, but it was mathematician John von Neumann who became widely credited with defining that stored-program computer architecture, on which the Manchester Mark 1 was based. The practical construction of a von Neumann computer depended on the availability of a suitable memory device. The University of Manchester's Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), the world's first stored-program computer, had successfully demonstrated the practicality of the stored-program approach and of the Williams tube, an early form of computer memory based on a standard cathode ray tube (CRT), by running its first program in June 1948. Early electronic computers were generally programmed by being rewired, or via plugs and patch panels; there was no separate program stored in memory, as in a modern computer. It could take several days to reprogram ENIAC, for instance. Stored-program computers were also being developed by other researchers, notably the National Physical Laboratory's Pilot ACE, Cambridge University's EDSAC, and the US Army's EDVAC. The SSEM and the Mark 1 differed primarily in their use of Williams tubes as memory devices, instead of mercury delay lines. From about August 1948, the SSEM was intensively developed as a prototype for the Manchester Mark 1, initially with the aim of providing the university with a more realistic computing facility. In October 1948, UK Government Chief Scientist Ben Lockspeiser was given a demonstration of the prototype Mark 1 while on a visit to the University of Manchester. Lockspeiser was so impressed by what he saw that he immediately initiated a government contract with the local firm of Ferranti to make a commercial version of the machine, the Ferranti Mark 1. In his letter to the company, dated 26 October 1948, Lockspeiser authorised the company to "proceed on the lines we discussed, namely, to construct an electronic calculating machine to the instructions of Professor F. C. Williams". From that point on, development of the Mark 1 had the additional purpose of supplying Ferranti with a design on which to base their commercial machine.〔 The government's contract with Ferranti ran for five years from November 1948, and involved an estimated £35,000 per year. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Manchester Mark 1」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|