UK to rebuild world’s first room-sized recognisably modern computer

Tuesday, 18 January 2011 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

ANI: The first recognisably modern computer, the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (Edsac), is to be rebuilt at the UK’s former code-cracking centre Bletchley Park.

Creation of the replica, which was a room-sized behemoth built at Cambridge University that first ran in 1949, has been commissioned by the UK’s Computer Conservation Society (CCS).

Edsac was one of several early British computers that pioneered the practical use of such machines, and the three-year rebuild will be carried out before visitors to The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley.

The machine had been conceived and created by late Sir Maurice Wilkes as a machine that could carry out many different kinds of calculation for Cambridge researchers and scientists.

“Edsac was the first to go into regular service to help the people Sir Maurice saw in Cambridge, researchers struggling with computation using desk calculators,” the BBC quoted Dr. David Hartley, Chairman of the CCS, as saying.