Mainframe Computer Component, Williams Tube Electrostatic Memory from the Ferranti Mark I Computer
date: label: date made
content: 1954
name: label: maker
content: Ferranti Limited
notes: label: Description
content: Not long after the end of World War II, developers in both the United States and Great Britain set out to build new forms of room-sized mainframe computers. One challenge was storing the information generated by with a computer program. Frederick C. Williams and Tom Kilburn headed a team at the University of Manchester in Manchester, England, that developed a computer memory in which bits of data were stored on the charged screen of a cathode ray tube. Information on the screen was refreshed every fifth of a second. Such an electrostatic memory came to be called a Williams tube.
label: Description
content: Williams tubes were first used on the Manchester Mark I, a computer built at the university there in 1948 and used until 1950. Impressed by the machine, the British government contracted with the Manchester firm of Ferranti, Ltd., to build nine commercial versions of it. These appeared between 1951 and 1957. This Williams tube comes from the Ferranti Mark I built for the AVROE Company in Manchester in 1954. That computer was used there for ten years to solve problems associated with aircraft design, management, and programmable machine tools.
label: Description
content: There are six vacuum tubes across the front of the amplifier, all marked: MULLARD. The first on the right is markedL 606VD, the second: 606UB, the thrid: 6064SL. A mark in the upper right corner reads: FERRANTI.
label: Description
content: The contents of the memory of a Mark I was represented by a grid of dots on the screens of the Williams tubes. As early as 1951, British schoolmaster Christopher Strachey began work on a program that allowed him to play draughts (checkers) on the Ferranti Mark I at the University of Manchester. Using this program, it was possible to make the screen of one Williams tube appear like a checkerboard – though not to show moves of individual pieces. Other computer programmers – and later video game enthusiasts – would go further.
label: Description
content: References:
label: Description
content: Accession file.
label: Description
content: Martin Campbell-Kelly, “Christopher Strachey,” <Annals of the History of Computing</I>, 7, #1, January, 1985, pp. 19-42.
label: Description
content: J. W. Cortada, <I>Historical Dictionary of Data Processing Technology</I>, New York: Greenwood Press, 1987, pp. 256-258.
label: Description
content: Simon Lavington, <I>Early British Computers</I>, Bedford, Massachusetts: Digital Press, 1980.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United Kingdom: England, Greater Manchester
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Computers
label: See more items in
content: Computers & Business Machines
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Ferranti, Ltd.
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CI.334386
label: catalog number
content: 334386
label: accession number
content: 309902
objectType: label: Object Name
content: mainframe computer component
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: plastic; glass (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 70 cm x 33 cm x 29 cm; 27 9/16 in x 13 in x 11 13/32 in