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TIFRAC (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Automatic Calculator) was the first computer developed in
TIFRAC (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Automatic Calculator) was the first computer developed in India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is a public deemed research university located in Mumbai, India that is dedicated to basic research in mathematics and the sciences. It is a Deemed University and works under the umbrella of the ...
in Mumbai
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...
. Initially a TIFR Pilot Machine was developed in the 1950s (operational in 1956). The development of the final machine was started in 1955 and was formally commissioned (and named as TIFRAC, by Jawaharlal Nehru
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist, secular humanist, social democrat—
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) in 1960. The full machine was in use until 1965.
TIFRAC included 2,700 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 potential difference has been applied.
The type known as ...
s, 1,700 germanium diode
A diode is a two-terminal electronic component that conducts current primarily in one direction (asymmetric conductance); it has low (ideally zero) resistance in one direction, and high (ideally infinite) resistance in the other.
A diode ...
s and 12,500 resistors. It had 2,048 40-bit words of ferrite core memory. This machine was an early adopter of ferrite core memory.
The main assembly of TIFRAC, which had vacuum tubes was housed in a massive steel rack measuring 18 feet x 2.5 feet x 8 feet. It was fabricated from modules of 4 feet x 2.5 feet x 8 feet. Each module had steel doors on either side for accessing the circuits.
A cathode ray tube display system was developed to serve as an auxiliary output to the computer for analogue and digital display of both graphs and alpha-numeric symbols.
A manual console served as the input/output control unit of the computer. The software of TIFRAC were written in a series of commands of 0's and 1's.
A British-built HEC 2M computer, happened to be the first digital computer in India, which was imported and installed in Indian Statistical Institute
Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta ...
, Kolkata, during 1955. Prior to that, this institute had developed a small Analog Computer
An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuous variation aspect of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities (''analog signals'') to model the problem being solved. In ...
in 1953, which is technically the first computer in India.
See also
*List of vacuum tube computers
Vacuum-tube computers, now called first-generation computers, are programmable digital computers using vacuum-tube logic circuitry. They were preceded by systems using electromechanical relays and followed by systems built from discrete transi ...
References
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