The Elliot 152 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 ...

fixed-program computer developed for naval gunnery control at the Elliott Brothers laboratory in Borehamwood, England. It was an early example of a digital real-time computer system, and the first computer produced by Elliott Brothers. The first and only unit was made operational in 1950. The machine used 16 bit words and two's complement binary arithmetic. Instruction words were 20 bits long. Read/write memory was provided by a bank of 16 Williams tubes, a cathode ray tube that could store 256 bits of data – the total memory was 256, 16-bit words. The access time of the memory limited the processor clock speed to 333 kHz. The computer could multiply two numbers in 60 microseconds.Simon Lavington, ''Moving Targets: Elliott-Automation and the Dawn of the Computer Age in Britain, 1947 – 67'', Springer Science & Business Media, 2011, pp. 58-62 The system hardware was built on glass

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB; also printed wiring board or PWB) is a medium used in Electrical engineering, electrical and electronic engineering to connect electronic components to one another in a controlled manner. It takes the form of a L ...

modules, but these proved to be unreliable. Intended as the centrepiece of the MRS5 fire control system, instead the

Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong * Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral * Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings *Admiralty, Tr ...

proceeded with an alternative design based on analog electronics. However, experience with the 152 was valuable to Elliott Brothers in the development of their other models of computer.

References

Vacuum tube computers Naval guns of the United Kingdom Early British computers {{Compu-hardware-stub

See also

References