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Thomas Kilburn
Tom Kilburn (11 August 1921 – 17 January 2001) was an English mathematician and computer scientist. Over the course of a productive 30-year career, he was involved in the development of five computers of great historical significance. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams–Kilburn tube and the world's first electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Baby, while working at the University of Manchester. His work propelled Manchester and Britain into the forefront of the emerging field of computer science. A graduate of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Kilburn worked on radar at the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in Malvern under Frederic Calland Williams during the Second World War. After the war ended, he was recruited by Williams to work on the development of computers at the University of Manchester. He led the development of a succession of innovative Manchester computers that incorporated a host of ground-breaking innovations and dev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dewsbury
Dewsbury is a minster and market town in the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees in West Yorkshire, England. It lies on the River Calder and on an arm of the Calder and Hebble Navigation waterway. It is to the west of Wakefield, east of Huddersfield and south of Leeds. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, after undergoing a period of major growth in the 19th century as a mill town, Dewsbury went through a period of decline. Dewsbury forms part of the Heavy Woollen District of which it is the largest town. According to the 2011 census, Dewsbury had a population of 62,945. History Toponymy The ''Domesday Book'' of 1086 records the name as ''Deusberie'', ''Deusberia'', ''Deusbereia'', or ''Deubire'', literally "Dewi's fort", Dewi being an old Welsh name (equivalent to David) and "bury" coming from the old English word "burh", meaning fort. Other, less supported, theories exist as to the name's origin. For example, that it means "dew hill", from Old English ''d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stored-program Computer
A stored-program computer is a computer that stores program instructions in electronically or optically accessible memory. This contrasts with systems that stored the program instructions with plugboards or similar mechanisms. The definition is often extended with the requirement that the treatment of programs and data in memory be interchangeable or uniform. Description In principle, stored-program computers have been designed with various architectural characteristics. A computer with a von Neumann architecture stores program data and instruction data in the same memory, while a computer with a Harvard architecture has separate memories for storing program and data. However, the term ''stored-program computer'' is sometimes used as a synonym for the von Neumann architecture. Jack Copeland considers that it is "historically inappropriate, to refer to electronic stored-program digital computers as 'von Neumann machines'". Hennessy and Patterson wrote that the early Harvard m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following 1883 for the financier and politician Sir Herbert Leon in the Victorian Gothic, Tudor, and Dutch Baroque styles, on the site of older buildings of the same name. During World War II, the estate housed the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powersmost importantly the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers. The GC&CS team of codebreakers included Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander, Bill Tutte, and Stuart Milner-Barry. The nature of the work at Bletchley remained secret until many years after the war. According to the official historian of British Intelligence, the "Ultra" intelligence produced at Bletchley shortened the war by two to four years, and without it th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Don
A don is a fellow or tutor of a college or university, especially traditional collegiate universities such as Oxford and Cambridge in England and Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. The usage is also found in Canada. Like the term don used for Roman Catholic priests, the term ''don'' derives from the Latin ''dominus'', meaning "lord", and is a historical remnant of Oxford and Cambridge having started as ecclesiastical institutions in the Middle Ages. The term ''don'' is also used for schoolmasters at Winchester College, where as well as the term generally meaning "teacher", there are also "Div Dons", form masters, and "House Dons", housemasters; and at Radley College, another boys-only boarding school modelled after Oxford colleges of the early 19th century. At some universities in Canada, such as the University of King's College and the University of New Brunswick, a don is the senior head of a university residence. At these institutions, a don is typically a faculty member, st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Computer Society
Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957 BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, known as the British Computer Society until 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in information technology (IT) and computer science, both in the United Kingdom and internationally. Founded in 1957, BCS has played an important role in educating and nurturing IT professionals, computer scientists, computer engineers, upholding the profession, accrediting chartered IT professional status, and creating a global community active in promoting and furthering the field and practice of computing. Overview With a worldwide membership of 57,625 members as of 2021, BCS is a registered charity and was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1984. Its objectives are to promote the study and application of communications technology and computing technology and to advance knowledge of education in ICT for the benefit of professional practitioners a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paging
In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme by which a computer stores and retrieves data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage in same-size blocks called ''pages''. Paging is an important part of virtual memory implementations in modern operating systems, using secondary storage to let programs exceed the size of available physical memory. For simplicity, main memory is called "RAM" (an acronym of random-access memory) and secondary storage is called "disk" (a shorthand for hard disk drive, drum memory or solid-state drive, etc.), but as with many aspects of computing, the concepts are independent of the technology used. Depending on the memory model, paged memory functionality is usually hardwired into a CPU/MCU by using a Memory Management Unit (MMU) or Memory Protection Unit (MPU) and separately enabled by privileged system code in the operating system's ke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instruction Pipelining
In computer engineering, instruction pipelining or ILP is a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. Pipelining attempts to keep every part of the processor busy with some instruction by dividing incoming instructions into a series of sequential steps (the eponymous "pipeline") performed by different processor units with different parts of instructions processed in parallel. Concept and motivation In a pipelined computer, instructions flow through the central processing unit (CPU) in stages. For example, it might have one stage for each step of the von Neumann cycle: Fetch the instruction, fetch the operands, do the instruction, write the results. A pipelined computer usually has "pipeline registers" after each stage. These store information from the instruction and calculations so that the logic gates of the next stage can do the next step. This arrangement lets the CPU complete an instruction on each clock cycle. It is common for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interrupt
In digital computers, an interrupt (sometimes referred to as a trap) is a request for the processor to ''interrupt'' currently executing code (when permitted), so that the event can be processed in a timely manner. If the request is accepted, the processor will suspend its current activities, save its state, and execute a function called an ''interrupt handler'' (or an ''interrupt service routine'', ISR) to deal with the event. This interruption is often temporary, allowing the software to resume normal activities after the interrupt handler finishes, although the interrupt could instead indicate a fatal error. Interrupts are commonly used by hardware devices to indicate electronic or physical state changes that require time-sensitive attention. Interrupts are also commonly used to implement computer multitasking, especially in real-time computing. Systems that use interrupts in these ways are said to be interrupt-driven. Types Interrupt signals may be issued in response to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spooling
In computing, spooling is a specialized form of multi-programming for the purpose of copying data between different devices. In contemporary systems, it is usually used for mediating between a computer application and a slow peripheral, such as a printer. Spooling allows programs to "hand off" work to be done by the peripheral and then proceed to other tasks, or to not begin until input has been transcribed. A dedicated program, the spooler, maintains an orderly sequence of jobs for the peripheral and feeds it data at its own rate. Conversely, for slow ''input'' peripherals, such as a card reader, a spooler can maintain a sequence of computational jobs waiting for data, starting each job when all of the relevant input is available; see batch processing. The spool itself refers to the sequence of jobs, or the storage area where they are held. In many cases, the spooler is able to drive devices at their full rated speed with minimal impact on other processing. Spooling is a co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Job Scheduler
A job scheduler is a computer application for controlling unattended background program execution of jobs. This is commonly called batch scheduling, as execution of non-interactive jobs is often called batch processing, though traditional ''job'' and ''batch'' are distinguished and contrasted; see that page for details. Other synonyms include batch system, distributed resource management system (DRMS), distributed resource manager (DRM), and, commonly today, workload automation (WLA). The data structure of jobs to run is known as the job queue. Modern job schedulers typically provide a graphical user interface and a single point of control for definition and monitoring of background executions in a distributed network of computers. Increasingly, job schedulers are required to orchestrate the integration of real-time business activities with traditional background IT processing across different operating system platforms and business application environments. ''Job scheduling'' s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferranti Mark 1
The Ferranti Mark 1, also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer in its sales literature, and thus sometimes called the Manchester Ferranti, was produced by British electrical engineering firm Ferranti Ltd. It was the world's first commercially available general-purpose digital computer. It was "the tidied up and commercialised version of the Manchester Mark I". The first machine was delivered to the Victoria University of Manchester in February 1951 (publicly demonstrated in July) ahead of the UNIVAC I, which was sold to the United States Census Bureau on 31 March 1951, although not delivered until late December the following year. History and specifications Based on the Manchester Mark 1, which was designed at the University of Manchester by Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn, the machine was built by Ferranti of the United Kingdom. The main improvements over it were in the size of the primary and secondary storage, a faster multiplier, and additional instructions. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malvern, Worcestershire
Malvern is a spa town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England. It lies at the foot of the Malvern Hills, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The centre of Malvern, Great Malvern, is a historic conservation area, which grew dramatically in Victorian times due to the natural mineral water springs in the vicinity, including Malvern Water. At the 2011 census it had a population of 29,626. It includes Great Malvern on the steep eastern flank of the Malvern Hills, as well as the former independent urban district of Malvern Link. Many of the major suburbs and settlements that comprise the town are separated by large tracts of open common land and fields, and together with smaller civil parishes adjoining the town's boundaries and the hills, the built up area is often referred to collectively as The Malverns. Archaeological evidence suggests that Bronze Age people had settled in the area around 1000 BC, although it is not known whether these settlements were permane ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
