EDSAC 2 was an early computer (operational in 1958), the successor to the

Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the Univers ...

(EDSAC). It was the first computer to have a microprogrammed

control unit The control unit (CU) is a component of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) that directs the operation of the processor. A CU typically uses a binary decoder to convert coded instructions into timing and control signals that direct the op ...

and a

bit-slice Bit slicing is a technique for constructing a processor from modules of processors of smaller bit width, for the purpose of increasing the word length; in theory to make an arbitrary ''n''-bit central processing unit (CPU). Each of these com ...

hardware architecture. EDSAC II chassis construction

First calculations were performed on incomplete machine in 1957. Calculations about elliptic curves performed on EDSAC-2 in the early 1960s led to the

Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture In mathematics, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture (often called the Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture) describes the set of rational solutions to equations defining an elliptic curve. It is an open problem in the field of number theory an ...

, a Millennium Prize Problem, unsolved as of 2022. And in 1963,

Frederick Vine Frederick John Vine FRS (born 17 June 1939) is an English marine geologist and geophysicist. He made key contributions to the theory of plate tectonics, helping to show that the seafloor spreads from mid-ocean ridges with a symmetrical patter ...

and

Drummond Matthews Drummond Hoyle Matthews FRS (5 February 1931 – 20 July 1997), known as "Drum", was a British marine geologist and geophysicist and a key contributor to the theory of plate tectonics. His work, along with that of fellow Briton Fred Vine a ...

used EDSAC 2 to generate a seafloor magnetic anomaly map from data collected in the Indian Ocean by H.M.S. Owen, key evidence that helped support Plate Tectonic theory.

References

Early British computers One-of-a-kind computers University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory History of Cambridge {{computer-stub