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Manchester Computers
The Manchester computers were an innovative series of stored-program electronic computers developed during the 30-year period between 1947 and 1977 by a small team at the University of Manchester, under the leadership of Tom Kilburn. They included the world's first stored-program computer, the world's first transistorised computer, and what was the world's fastest computer at the time of its inauguration in 1962. The project began with two aims: to prove the practicality of the Williams tube, an early form of computer memory based on standard cathode-ray tubes (CRTs); and to construct a machine that could be used to investigate how computers might be able to assist in the solution of mathematical problems. The first of the series, the Manchester Baby, ran its first program on 21 June 1948. As the world's first stored-program computer, the Baby, and the Manchester Mark 1 developed from it, quickly attracted the attention of the United Kingdom government, who contracted the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SSEM Manchester Museum
SSEM can refer to: * Manchester Baby or Small-Scale Experimental Machine, historic computer * South Seas Evangelical Mission The South Sea Evangelical Church (SSEC) is an evangelical, Pentecostal church in Solomon Islands. In total, 17% of the population of Solomon Islands adheres to the church, making it the third most common religious affiliation in the country behind ..., missionary organization in the Solomon Islands * Serial-section electron microscopy (ssEM), a form of transmission electron microscopy {{Disambig Abreviación de la Secretaria de Seguridad del Estado de México S.S.E.M. (Policía del Estado de México) anteriormente Comisión Estatal de Seguridad Ciudadana (CES) y que se le modifico el nombre al tomar posesión de la gobernatura el Lic. Alfredo del Mazo 2017. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Point-contact Transistor
The point-contact transistor was the first type of transistor to be successfully demonstrated. It was developed by research scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain at Bell Laboratories in December 1947. They worked in a group led by physicist William Shockley. The group had been working together on experiments and theories of electric field effects in solid state materials, with the aim of replacing vacuum tubes with a smaller device that consumed less power. The critical experiment, carried out on December 16, 1947, consisted of a block of germanium, a semiconductor, with two very closely spaced gold contacts held against it by a spring. Brattain attached a small strip of gold foil over the point of a plastic triangle — a configuration which is essentially a point-contact diode. He then carefully sliced through the gold at the tip of the triangle. This produced two electrically isolated gold contacts very close to each other. The piece of germanium used had a surface l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanium
Germanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid in the carbon group that is chemically similar to its group neighbors silicon and tin. Like silicon, germanium naturally reacts and forms complexes with oxygen in nature. Because it seldom appears in high concentration, germanium was discovered comparatively late in the discovery of the elements. Germanium ranks near fiftieth in relative abundance of the elements in the Earth's crust. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev predicted its existence and some of its properties from its position on his periodic table, and called the element ekasilicon. In 1886, Clemens Winkler at Freiberg University found the new element, along with silver and sulfur, in the mineral argyrodite. Winkler named the element after his country, Germany. Germanium is mined primarily from sphalerite (the primary ore of zinc), though germani ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transistor
upright=1.4, gate (G), body (B), source (S) and drain (D) terminals. The gate is separated from the body by an insulating layer (pink). A transistor is a semiconductor device used to Electronic amplifier, amplify or electronic switch, switch electrical signals and electrical power, power. The transistor is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more are found embedded in integrated circuits. Austro-Hungarian physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld proposed the concept of a field-effect transistor in 1926, but it was not possible to actually cons ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Grimsdale
Richard Lawrence Grimsdale (18 September 1929 – 6 December 2005) was a British electrical engineer and computer pioneer who helped to design the world's first transistorised computer. Early life and education Richard Lawrence Grimsdale was born on 18 September 1929 in Australia, where his father, an English engineer, was working on construction of the suburban railway system for the Metropolitan-Vickers company. The family returned to England, where he was educated at Manchester Grammar School, and then studied electrical engineering at the University of Manchester, where he earned his Bachelor of Science, his Master of Science in 1951, writing a thesis on ''Computing Machines - Design of Test Programmes'', and subsequently his Doctor of Philosophy, writing his thesis on the ''Transistor Digital Computer'' under the supervision of Frederic Calland Williams. Career In 1953, whilst still a post-graduate research student at the University of Manchester, Grimsdale achieved one of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Core Memory
Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber * Core, the central part of a fruit * Hydrophobic core, the interior zone of a protein * Nuclear reactor core, a portion containing the fuel components * Pit (nuclear weapon) or core, the fissile material in a nuclear weapon * Semiconductor intellectual property core (IP core), is a unit of design in ASIC/FPGA electronics and IC manufacturing * Atomic core, an atom with no valence electrons Geology and astrophysics * Core sample, in Earth science, a sample obtained by coring ** Ice core * Core, the central part of a galaxy; see Mass deficit * Core (anticline), the central part of an anticline or syncline * Planetary core, the center of a planet ** Earth's inner core ** Earth's outer core * Stellar core, the region of a star where nuclear fusion takes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferranti Mercury
The Mercury was an early commercial computer from the mid-1950s built by Ferranti. It was the successor to the Ferranti Mark 1, adding a floating point unit for improved performance, and increased reliability by replacing the Williams tube memory with core memory and using more solid-state components. The computer had roughly 2000 vacuum tubes (mostly type CV2179/A2134 pentodes, EL81 pentodes and CV2493/ECC88 double triodes) and 2000 germanium diodes. Nineteen Mercuries were sold before Ferranti moved on to newer designs. Predecessor: Mark I When the Mark I started running in 1951, reliability was poor. The primary concern was the drum memory system, which broke down all the time. Additionally, the machine used 4,200 thermionic valves, mostly EF50 pentodes and diodes that had to be replaced constantly. The Williams tubes, used as random-access memory and registers, were reliable but required constant maintenance. As soon as the system went into operation, teams started looking at s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floating-point Unit
In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be represented as a base-ten floating-point number: 12.345 = \underbrace_\text \times \underbrace_\text\!\!\!\!\!\!^ In practice, most floating-point systems use base two, though base ten ( decimal floating point) is also common. The term ''floating point'' refers to the fact that the number's radix point can "float" anywhere to the left, right, or between the significant digits of the number. This position is indicated by the exponent, so floating point can be considered a form of scientific notation. A floating-point system can be used to represent, with a fixed number of digits, numbers of very different orders of magnitude — such as the number of meters between galaxies or between protons in an atom. For this reason, floating-po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Index Registers
An index register in a computer's CPU is a processor register (or an assigned memory location) used for pointing to operand addresses during the run of a program. It is useful for stepping through strings and arrays. It can also be used for holding loop iterations and counters. In some architectures it is used for read/writing blocks of memory. Depending on the architecture it maybe a dedicated index register or a general-purpose register. Some instruction sets allow more than one index register to be used; in that case additional instruction fields may specify which index registers to use. Generally, the contents of an index register is added to (in some cases subtracted from) an ''immediate'' address (that can be part of the instruction itself or held in another register) to form the "effective" address of the actual data (operand). Special instructions are typically provided to test the index register and, if the test fails, increments the index register by an immediate con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ben Lockspeiser
Sir Ben Lockspeiser, KCB, FRS, MIMechE, FRAeS (9 March 1891 – 18 October 1990) was a British scientific administrator and the first President of CERN. Early life and education Lockspeiser was born at 7 President Street in the City of London, the eldest son of Leon Lockspeiser, diamond merchant, and Rosa (née Gleitzman), immigrants from Poland. He spent most of his early years in Clapham, and was educated at the Grocers' School, Hackney. At age fifteen he was awarded a prize as “the best junior boy in all England” in the University of Cambridge Junior Local Examination. Two years later he won an open scholarship to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he gained a first in part one of the natural sciences tripos, and a second in the mechanical sciences tripos. Career When the First World War began Lockspeiser immediately enlisted with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), and sailed for Gallipoli as a private in 1915. He was soon invalided out with amoebic dysen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nature (journal)
''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. It has core editorial offices across the United States, continental Europe, and Asia under the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature. ''Nature'' was one of the world's most cited scientific journals by the Science Edition of the 2019 '' Journal Citation Reports'' (with an ascribed impact factor of 42.778), making it one of the world's most-read and most prestigious academic journals. , it claimed an online readership of about three million unique readers per month. Founded in autumn 1869, ''Nature'' was first circulated by Norman Lockyer and Alexander Macmillan as a public forum for scientific innovations. The mid-20th century facilitated an editorial expansion for the journal; ''Nature'' redoubled its efforts in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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