Friday, January 15, 2010

Everybody gonna stamp their feet, everybody's gonna feel the beat!


A few days ago, the Times published an obituary for Andrew Booth, an English scientist who played a pioneering role in the development of the computer.

Booth invented the magnetic storage device, using the magnetic properties of a nickel coated drum to store data. He first demonstrated the capabilities of a rotating magnetic drum in May 1948.

The drum in the first computer he developed had the following characteristics:

"The main memory was a rotating magnetic drum with 32 tracks. Each track held 32 words of 32 bits each. Ten bits were enough to address any word in the memory. The machine was serial. Each revolution of the drum took 32 `major' cycles, and inside each major cycle there were 32 minor cycles or bit pulses. A simple data operation such as a 32-bit addition took 32 minor cycles. However, the number of cycles actually used for any operation was controlled by the counter field, which specified a six-bit starting value. The operation would be halted as soon as the counter overflowed. Since the memory did not have random access characteristics there were obvious advantages in being able to place successive instructions in the `best' place on the drum. This implied that each instruction needed to carry the address of its predecessor." (Collin, 1993).

The magnetic drum became a key component of early (upto late 1970s) commercial computers. The ICL 1900 series mainframe used by my first employer, South Yorkshire County Council, in the 1970s, featured a magnetic drum supplemented by several exchangible discs (EDS 8 and EDS 20) which, to my recollection, had a capacity of 8 and 20 megabytes.

Booth assembled his first computer at Birkbeck College in 1952. This was a small-scale project, with a team comprising of Booth, his programming assistant (and future wife) plus an engineer. The engineer was his first Masters student, Norman Kitz, who later designed the world's first electronic desktop calculator (Johnson, 2008).

In 1957, Booth established the first university department in the UK dedicated to the study of computing. This was originally known as Department of Numerical Automation. Today it is the School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

Finally, he also played a leading role in the establishment of the British Computer Society. In 1956/7, he chaired the committee to set up a national computer society (Johnson, 2008).


Notes:
Collin, A (1993) Andrew Booth's Computers at Birbeck College, Computer Ressurection Issue 5, Computer Conservation Society http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/CCS/res/res05.htm#e

Johnson R (2008) Birkbeck School of Computer Science and Information Systems: A Short History http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/50years/50yearsofcomputing.pdf

The title of this blog is a quote from Paul McCartney's song Dance Tonight which appeared first on his 2007 album Memory Almost Full.