CSIRAC, the 1st Aussie Computer
Almost 60 years ago, at the time when Indonesia was still struggling for defending its independence in 1949, a computing machine was being built in Sydney Australia, by the team led by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard. The computer was called CSIRAC, standing for Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer. (this council has now changed its name to CSIRO, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization)
This early generation of digital computer looks like this:
Huge, isn't it? However, this computer is not a supercomputer which usully have such large dimensions. The computing power of CSIRAC was comparable to today's small pocket organizer.
The processor of CSIRAC was not a chip like in computers nowadays. The CPU of CSIRAC is constructed from vacuum tubes, or valves, like this:
CSIRAC had disk drives, and something similar to today's RAM. This is the disk drive of CSIRAC:
As you can see, there's a motor on this disk drive. This electric motor must be controllable, and the circuit to control it looks like this:
This computer had no keyboards or mouse, nor any display monitors. A program was entered to CSIRAC using paper tapes, which appears like this:
Oh yeah, CSIRAC was a 20-bit computer. The data bus (or data trunk or whatever) was a serial bus, not parallel such as in other ordinary computers. I am not sure why they made the bus send 1 bit at a time (thus called serial bus), what i know is that CSIRAC was notable for its simplicity of programming. It may be slow, but it is easier to be programmed, maybe because it had simple yet powerful instruction sets. One of the programs written for CSIRAC was like this:
With such a humongous size, CSIRAC must have consumed a great amount of power. The power supply needed two cabinets (or maybe more, i only saw two). This made the room where the computer sits becomes normally warm. One thing i like about the power supply of CSIRAC was the "STC" label inside some parts of the power supply unit. Ibu (my mother) once worked in STC before I was born and when I was in Kindergarten.
CSIRAC is now on display in Victoria Museum, Melbourne. In the late 1950's it was moved from Sydney to Melbourne, and it had been operational for both academic and commercial purpose until mid 1960's in Melbourne University.
Speaking of Victoria Museum, do you know what's the largest collection being held in this museum? No, not the gigantic whale skeleton, and no... not the large dinosaur skeleton. Believe it or not, the Melbourne Exhibition Building, the place where the first Australian flag was raisen (it was in 1901 i suppose), is the biggest collection of the museum. The new Victoria Museum building is adjacent to the old Melbourne Exhibition Building.
This early generation of digital computer looks like this:
Huge, isn't it? However, this computer is not a supercomputer which usully have such large dimensions. The computing power of CSIRAC was comparable to today's small pocket organizer.
The processor of CSIRAC was not a chip like in computers nowadays. The CPU of CSIRAC is constructed from vacuum tubes, or valves, like this:
CSIRAC had disk drives, and something similar to today's RAM. This is the disk drive of CSIRAC:
As you can see, there's a motor on this disk drive. This electric motor must be controllable, and the circuit to control it looks like this:
This computer had no keyboards or mouse, nor any display monitors. A program was entered to CSIRAC using paper tapes, which appears like this:
Oh yeah, CSIRAC was a 20-bit computer. The data bus (or data trunk or whatever) was a serial bus, not parallel such as in other ordinary computers. I am not sure why they made the bus send 1 bit at a time (thus called serial bus), what i know is that CSIRAC was notable for its simplicity of programming. It may be slow, but it is easier to be programmed, maybe because it had simple yet powerful instruction sets. One of the programs written for CSIRAC was like this:
With such a humongous size, CSIRAC must have consumed a great amount of power. The power supply needed two cabinets (or maybe more, i only saw two). This made the room where the computer sits becomes normally warm. One thing i like about the power supply of CSIRAC was the "STC" label inside some parts of the power supply unit. Ibu (my mother) once worked in STC before I was born and when I was in Kindergarten.
CSIRAC is now on display in Victoria Museum, Melbourne. In the late 1950's it was moved from Sydney to Melbourne, and it had been operational for both academic and commercial purpose until mid 1960's in Melbourne University.
Speaking of Victoria Museum, do you know what's the largest collection being held in this museum? No, not the gigantic whale skeleton, and no... not the large dinosaur skeleton. Believe it or not, the Melbourne Exhibition Building, the place where the first Australian flag was raisen (it was in 1901 i suppose), is the biggest collection of the museum. The new Victoria Museum building is adjacent to the old Melbourne Exhibition Building.
posted by Irfan at 8:32 am
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