The ALWAC III-E was an early commercial

vacuum-tube computer A vacuum-tube computer, now termed a first-generation computer, is a computer that uses vacuum tubes for logic circuitry. Although superseded by second-generation transistorized computers, vacuum-tube computers continued to be built into the 196 ...

employing a rotating

magnetic drum Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory of ...

main storage unit, operational in 1955. It weighed about . The invention of the ALWAC III-E is attributed to

Axel Wenner-Gren Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren (5 June 1881 – 24 November 1961) was a Swedish entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest men in the world during the 1930s. Early life He was born on 5 June 1881 in Uddevalla, a town on the west coast of Sweden. He w ...

, and the name is derived from Axel Leonard Wenner-Gren Automatic Computer, letter E stands for the E-register (

index register 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 hol ...

). The ALWAC III-E contained 132–275 vacuum tubes, 5000–5400 silicon diodes, and cost $60,000–$80,000. Word size was 32 bits + sign + recoverable overflow bit. Instruction execution times (including average memory access times) were 5.25–5.75 milliseconds for addition and subtraction, and 21.25 ms for multiplication and division. An ALWAC III-E was installed at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...

in March 1957 and remained in service until October 1961. Others were installed at

Oregon State University Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering c ...

(then College) and

Loyola Marymount University Loyola Marymount University (LMU) is a private Jesuit and Marymount research university in Los Angeles, California. It is located on the west side of the city near Playa Vista. LMU is the parent school to Loyola Law School, which is located ...

(then Loyola University of Los Angeles). An ALWAC III-E was installed by the CIA in September, 1957 in the offices of the Photographic Intelligence Division. Located at Fifth and K streets NW. and given the name Project Automat, the ALWAC was used to analyze pictures taken by U-2 spy planes.

Memory

Wegematic 1000

In 1960 Wenner-Gren Centre Foundation donated a Wegematic 1000 (based on ALWAC III-E) computer to the

University of Turku sv, Åbo universitet , latin_name = Universitas Aboensis , image_name = University of Turku.svg , motto = ''Vapaan kansan lahja vapaalle tieteelle'' , established = 1920 , type ...

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

, Finland.

References

External links

*Photo of ALWAC III-E at UBC: * Vacuum tube computers 1950s computers {{Compu-hardware-stub

Memory

Wegematic 1000

Further reading

References

External links