
SMIL ( sv, Siffermaskinen i Lund, "The Number Machine in Lund") was a
first-generation 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 ...
built at
Lund University in
Lund
Lund (, , ) is a city in the southern Swedish provinces of Sweden, province of Scania, across the Øresund, Öresund strait from Copenhagen. The town had 91,940 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 121,510 . It is the seat of Lund Municipali ...
,
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
. SMIL was based on the
IAS architecture developed by
John von Neumann.
Carl-Erik Fröberg belonged to the group of five young Swedish scientists 1947–48 that IVA sent to the U.S. to gather information about the early computer development, and then came to strongly influence the development in Sweden. Fröberg visited with Erik Stemme the
Institute for Advanced Study, and John von Neumann's research group. Back in Lund, he played a leading role in the creation of SMIL, which was the first computer developed in Lund and among the first in Sweden. SMIL was introduced in 1956 and then was in operation until 1970.
In February 1962 SMIL was fitted with a compiler for
ALGOL 60
ALGOL 60 (short for ''Algorithmic Language 1960'') is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It followed on from ALGOL 58 which had introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them, representing a k ...
. The compiler was constructed by Torgil Ekman and Leif Robertson.
Carl-Erik Fröberg was also behind the early emergence of
numerical analysis as a separate university subject. In this context, he wrote himself and collaborated with others on several textbooks in computer education, for example, ''Textbook on Numerical Analysis'' (1962) and ''Textbook of Algol'' (1964). These books were widely distributed and translated into several languages.
Parts of SMIL are exhibited at
Malmö Technical Museum.
On January 4, 2006, an
emulator of SMIL named SMILemu was released with a Java and version.
See also
*
BARK
Bark may refer to:
* Bark (botany), an outer layer of a woody plant such as a tree or stick
* Bark (sound), a vocalization of some animals (which is commonly the dog)
Places
* Bark, Germany
* Bark, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, Poland
Arts, ...
- Binär Aritmetisk Relä-Kalkylator - Sweden's first computer
*
BESK - Binär Elektronisk Sekvens-Kalkylator - Sweden's second computer
*
Torsten Hägerstrand – a Swedish geographer (and friend of Fröberg) who used SMIL
References
IAS architecture computers
Lund University
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