The DASK was the first

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...

. It was commissioned in 1955, designed and constructed by

Regnecentralen Regnecentralen (RC) was the first Denmark, Danish computer company, founded on October 12, 1955. Through the 1950s and 1960s, they designed a series of computers, originally for their own use, and later to be sold commercially. Descendants of the ...

, and began operation in September 1957. DASK is an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

for Dansk Aritmetisk Sekvens Kalkulator or ''Danish Arithmetic Sequence Calculator''. Regnecentralen almost didn't allow the name, as the word ''dask'' means "slap" in Danish. In the end however, it was named so as it fit the pattern of the name

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 Board ...

, the

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

computer which provided the initial architecture for DASK. DASK traces its origins to 1947 and a goal set by ''Akademiet for de Tekniske Videnskaber'' (''Academy for the Technical Sciences'' or ''Academy of Applied Sciences''), which was to follow the development of the modern computing devices. Initial funding was obtained through the

Ministry of Defence (Denmark) The Danish Ministry of Defence ( da, Forsvarsministeriet, short ''FMN'') is a ministry in the Danish government. It is charged with overall planning, development, and strategic guidance of the entire area of responsibility of the Danish Defenc ...

as the

Danish Military Danish Defence ( da, Forsvaret, fo, Danska verjan, kl, Illersuisut) is the unified armed forces of the Kingdom of Denmark charged with the defence of Denmark and its constituent, self-governing nations Greenland and the Faroe Islands. The De ...

had been given a grant through the

Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...

for cipher machines for which the military saw no immediate need. Originally conceived to be a copy of

, the rapid advancement in the field allowed improvements to be made during the development such that in the end, it was not a copy of BESK. The DASK was a one-off design that took place in a villa. The machine became so big that the floor had to be reinforced to support its mass of 3.5 metric tons. DASK is notable for being the subject of one of the earliest

ALGOL ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...

implementations, referred to as DASK ALGOL, which counted

Jørn Jensen Jørn Jensen (1925 – 2007) was one of the earliest Danish computer programmers. Examined as a mechanical engineer, he had worked with electromechanical construction. In 1958, he was employed at the Danish Regnecentralen (RC), and very soon exh ...

and

Peter Naur Peter Naur (25 October 1928 – 3 January 2016) was a Danish computer science pioneer and Turing award winner. He is best remembered as a contributor, with John Backus, to the Backus–Naur form (BNF) notation used in describing the syntax for mo ...

among its contributors.

Architecture

The DASK was a

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. The type kn ...

machine based on the Swedish

design. As described in 1956, it contained 2500 vacuum tubes, 1500 solid-state elements, and required a

three-phase power Three-phase electric power (abbreviated 3φ) is a common type of alternating current used in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. It is a type of polyphase system employing three wires (or four including an optional neutral r ...

supply of at least 15 kW. Fast storage was 1024 40-bit words of

magnetic core memory Magnetic-core memory was the predominant form of random-access computer memory for 20 years between about 1955 and 1975. Such memory is often just called core memory, or, informally, core. Core memory uses toroids (rings) of a hard magnetic ...

(cycle time 5µs), directly addressable as 1024 full or 2048 half-words. This was complemented by an additional 8192 words of backing store on

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 ...

(3000 rpm). A full word stored 40-bit numbers in two's-complement form, or two 20-bit instructions. In addition to two accumulators, the DASK had three

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 ...

s, which could be used to modify the address of most instructions. An instruction word consisted of 11 bits for an address, two bits for index register selection, and 7 bits for the operation code and its modifiers. Operations included addition and subtraction (56 µs),

multiplication Multiplication (often denoted by the cross symbol , by the mid-line dot operator , by juxtaposition, or, on computers, by an asterisk ) is one of the four elementary mathematical operations of arithmetic, with the other ones being additi ...

and division (364 µs), binary shift and bitwise conjunction. Peripherals initially included 5-bit paper tape (400 cps read time) and teletypewriter (12 cps); magnetic tape and other peripherals were added later on.

References

External links

Early Computing in DenmarkHOPL entry for DASK AlgolDansk Datahistorisk Forening
Virtual Museum (in

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

)
Technical description of the DASK
(in

) *
DASK – A video featuring original footage of DASK and some of its operators
Mediehuset Ingeniøren {{DEFAULTSORT:Dask IAS architecture computers 1950s computers Vacuum tube computers One-of-a-kind computers Algol programming language family Science and technology in Denmark Valby

Architecture

See also

References

External links