BARK () was an early

electromechanical computer A mechanical computer is a computer built from mechanical components such as levers and gears rather than electronic components. The most common examples are adding machines and mechanical counters, which use the turning of gears to increment out ...

. BARK was built using standard telephone relays, implementing a 32-bit binary machine. It could perform addition in 150 ms and multiplication in 250 ms. It had a memory with 50 registers and 100 constants. It was later expanded to double the memory.

Howard Aiken Howard Hathaway Aiken (March 8, 1900 – March 14, 1973) was an American physicist and a pioneer in computing, being the original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer. Biography Aiken studied at the University of Wisconsi ...

stated in reference to BARK "This is the first computer I have seen outside Harvard that actually works."

History

BARK was developed by ''

Matematikmaskinnämnden The Swedish Board for Computing Machinery ( sv, Matematikmaskinnämnden, MMN) was a Swedish government agency which built Sweden's first computers: BARK and BESK. A governmental study into the need for computing machinery in Sweden had been conduct ...

'' (

Swedish Board for Computing Machinery The Swedish Board for Computing Machinery ( sv, Matematikmaskinnämnden, MMN) was a Swedish government agency which built Sweden's first computers: BARK and BESK. A governmental study into the need for computing machinery in Sweden had been conduct ...

) a few years before

BESK BESK (''Binär Elektronisk SekvensKalkylator'', Swedish for "Binary Electronic Sequence Calculator") was Sweden's first electronic computer, using vacuum tubes instead of relays. It was developed by '' Matematikmaskinnämnden'' ( Swedish Boar ...

. The machine was built with 8,000 standard telephone relays, 80 km of cable and with 175,000 soldering points. Programming was done by

plugboard A plugboard or control panel (the term used depends on the application area) is an array of jacks or sockets (often called hubs) into which patch cords can be inserted to complete an electrical circuit. Control panels are sometimes used to di ...

. It was completed in February 1950 at a cost of 400,000 Swedish kronor (less than $100,000), became operational on April 28, 1950, and was taken offline on September 22, 1954. The engineers on the team led by

Conny Palm Conrad "Conny" Palm (1907–1951) was a Swedish electrical engineer and statistician, known for several contributions to teletraffic engineering and queueing theory. Rolf B. HaugenThe life and work of Conny Palm – some personal comments and ex ...

were Harry Freese, Gösta Neovius, Olle Karlqvist, Carl-Erik Fröberg, G. Kellberg, Björn Lind, Arne Lindberger, P. Petersson and Madeline Wallmark.

References

External links

Tekn. lic. Olle Karlqvist in memoriam
(in Swedish)

memorial site of one of the engineers behind BARK and BESK. On BARK page there's a technical pdf document (in English): ''The BARK, A Swedish General Purpose Relay Computer'' One-of-a-kind computers Electro-mechanical computers Science and technology in Sweden {{compu-hardware-stub

History

See also

References

External links