[SIGCIS-Members] Were any early computers completed on schedule?

[Ceruzzi, Paul]

Thanks, Brian. In America we would say that the Colossus is the Rodney Dangerfield of computers -- it does not get the respect it deserves.

One issue that I have is that for most early computers (and complex technology in general), there was no such thing as being "finished" on a certain date.  Perhaps with the exception of the Colossus, they all eased themselves into operation. So it is not clear when to assign a date of completion, as much as people want to do that.

Paul E. Ceruzzi
Chair, Division of Space History
National Air & Space Museum
MRC 311; PO Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012
202-633-2414 
<http://www.nasm.si.edu/staffDetail.cfm?staffID=24> 

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Brian Randell
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2014 6:06 AM
To: thaigh at computer.org
Cc: <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Were any early computers completed on schedule?

Hi Tom:

The first Colossus was built on the initiative of Tommy Flowers at the Post Office Research Station, and was completed in eleven months, becoming operational there in December 1943, before being moved to  Bletchley Park where it was placed into service in early 1944. Soon after this he and his team were "asked" to make a dozen further machines, which were wanted by June 1944! This was plainly impossible, but Flowers undertook to try to get the first production, or Mark 2, Colossus ready by that date, and further ones ready at about one month intervals. (The Mark 2 Colossus machines involved a major redesign and through the use of parallelism were five times faster than the initial machine.)

To quote my paper, at the 1976 Los Alamos conference on the History of Computing on Colossus: "By 31 May [the first Mark 2 Colossus] was nearly complete. Flowers, Broadhurst, Chandler, Coombs and Saville were all at Bletchley Park, but they could not get the machine to work. Eventually, in the early hours of 1 June, the others went home to get some sleep, leaving Chandler to work on, since the trouble was in the part he had redesigned. In his words, "The whole system was in a state of violent parasitic oscillation at a frequency outside the range of our oscilloscopes [and then] by way of diversion, at about 3.00 a.m. a nearby radiator started leaking, sending a pool of warm water towards the equipment!". He eventually found a means of curing the problem and at nearly 4.00 a.m. left Norman Thurlow, one of the maintenance engineers, to finish the required rewiring. The others others arrived back at 8.30 a.m. to find that the machine was working. The deadline had been beaten - and it was just five days to D-day, 6 June 1944!" [https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v1/url?u=http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/books/papers/133.pdf&k=diZKtJPqj4jWksRIF4bjkw%3D%3D%0A&r=iEx95BOSDrL1SbShZgBAew%3D%3D%0A&m=tfHMe3JuD9T32JpBQY0J1zbPYDidGqKq6g8doPfgbqs%3D%0A&s=50ad56df86049bc505ab2fa438adf88a8bbc98d2fa7a830b33f8a8d0f4d832a3]

By the end of the war, at least ten Colossi were operational at Bletchley Park.

So the answer to your question about Colossus is an emphatic "yes".

Cheers

Brian


On 13 Jan 2014, at 17:17, Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org>
 wrote:

> Hello,
>  
> For my ongoing project on ENIAC I've written a sentence SEAC, another early computer, that includes the words "..although finished well behind schedule, like all early computers.".
>  
> It's been suggested to me that several Colossus computers were in fact finished on schedule. Does anyone know if this is true?
>  
> Also, are there any other examples of early digital computers of the 1940s or earlier reaching reliable operation more or less on the schedule promised to the people funding them? Delays to ENIAC, EDVAC, the IAS computer, ACE, Univac, the Manchester Mark 1, the  Harvard Mark 1, and of course Babbage's Difference Engine are well documented.
>  
> I can always change "all" to "most" but this is now making me curious.
>  
> Best wishes,
> 
> Tom
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School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
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